This latest work features protagonists pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
