This latest work centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
