🔗 Share this article

This latest work features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par