The new book features characters pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
