This latest work features individuals seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned 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 nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, 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
