The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus – A Renowned Writer Explores New Ground

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help 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 makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband 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 rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that the author often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par