🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app 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 getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par