The new book centers on individuals pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
