Exploring The Four Spent the Day Together from author Chris Kraus – A Cult Writer Attempts Something New

The new book features characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position 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 currently desires to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par