A Look at The Four Spent the Day Together from Chris Kraus – A Cult Writer Explores Something New

The new book is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on 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, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her 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 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

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 enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par