The new book is populated with characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, 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. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
