This latest work features protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
