This latest work is populated with protagonists pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
