The Four Spent the Day Together by author Chris Kraus – A Cult Writer Ventures Into Something New

This latest work centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion 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 online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par