The new book features characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
