This latest work features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems 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 could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
