🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story 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 expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par