The new book features individuals seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
