🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this presents as a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par