This latest work is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker 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 explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states 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 be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
