The new book features characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words 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 precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
