The new book features individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
