🔗 Share this article

This latest work features individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition 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 largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. 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 was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par