🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par