🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended 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 fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par