The Four Spent the Day Together by author Chris Kraus – An Iconic Writer Ventures Into Fresh Territory

The new book features protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure 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 void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par