The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus – An Iconic Writer Explores Something New

This latest work features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, 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. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par