The new book centers on individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
