🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. 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 degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par