This latest work centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
