This latest work features protagonists seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
