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

This latest work centers on characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par