The new book features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
