The new book features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
