🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an creative 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, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma 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 expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par