🔗 Share this article

This latest work centers on characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid 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 the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, 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