This latest work is populated with characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. 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 online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
