This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness 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 large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks 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 not understand, would not even perceive".
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
