The new book centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated 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 explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
