🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units 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 Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par