This latest work features protagonists pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is 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.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
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