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

The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a 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 a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par