The new book is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to 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 significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly 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 derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
