🔗 Share this article

The new book is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise 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 long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par