The new book features individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
