The Four Spent the Day Together from Chris Kraus – A Cult Writer Attempts New Ground

This latest work centers on protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired 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 fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par