🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice 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 dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par