The new book is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells 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 destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
