🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. 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 exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par