This latest work features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
