🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion 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 nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par