This latest work features protagonists seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
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. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. 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 point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
