🔗 Share this article

This latest work centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks 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 be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet 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 killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par