This latest work features characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
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 wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
