🔗 Share this article

This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations 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 troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par