This latest work centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
