🔗 Share this article

This latest work centers on characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par