This latest work is populated with characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
