The new book features protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
