🔗 Share this article

This latest work features characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world 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 defiance. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par