Exploring The Four Spent the Day Together from Chris Kraus – An Iconic Writer Attempts New Ground

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par