This latest work centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
