🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering 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 often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par