🔗 Share this article

The new book centers on protagonists pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par