The new book centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
