This latest work centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when 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, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care 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 daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. 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
