The Four Spent the Day Together by author Chris Kraus – An Iconic Writer Explores Fresh Territory

This latest work features characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par