🔗 Share this article

This latest work centers on characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par