This latest work features characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
