This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
