🔗 Share this article

The new book is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer was originally an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion 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 the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par