🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par