🔗 Share this article

This latest work features characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues 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 accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par