🔗 Share this article

This latest work is populated with characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par