🔗 Share this article

The new book centers on characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail 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 lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par