🔗 Share this article

The new book is populated with individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par