This latest work features individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. 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 could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
