This latest work features individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
