The new book centers on protagonists seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
