The new book features characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer began as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
