🔗 Share this article

This latest work features individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "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 seems to be making her own fresh start, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around 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 fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par