🔗 Share this article

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par