This latest work centers on characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
