This latest work features characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent 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 a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
