This latest work is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning 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 directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 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 experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
