This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
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 daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
