This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally 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 assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
