🔗 Share this article

This latest work is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail 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 lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par