🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par