This latest work is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" 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 America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile 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 aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
