🔗 Share this article

This latest work features protagonists seeking clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

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 readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par