The new book centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
