🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par