The new book features individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
