This latest work features characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied 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 boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
