This latest work features individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
