This latest work centers on characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
