This latest work centers on characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
