This latest work centers on individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
