🔗 Share this article

This latest work features protagonists seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex 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 shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par