This latest work is populated with characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
