This latest work features characters seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
