This latest work centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
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. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim 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 community largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges 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 audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
