🔗 Share this article

This latest work features individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par