🔗 Share this article

This latest work features characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par