🔗 Share this article

The new book features individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par