🔗 Share this article

The new book is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol 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 city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par