This latest work centers on individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "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
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
