The Four Spent the Day Together from Chris Kraus – A Renowned Writer Attempts Fresh Territory

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "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 expected this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing 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 strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par