🔗 Share this article

This latest work centers on protagonists seeking clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to 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 prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par