🔗 Share this article

This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par