This latest work features individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three 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. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred 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 going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
