🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par