The new book is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
