🔗 Share this article

The new book is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par