This latest work features individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world 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 persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
