🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of 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 prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par