This latest work features individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
