The new book is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
