The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus – A Cult Writer Ventures Into Fresh Territory

The new book centers on individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par