The new book features individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this presents as a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
