🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par