This latest work is populated with protagonists seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
