🔗 Share this article

The new book features individuals pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim 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 lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par