Exploring The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus – An Iconic Writer Explores Something New

The new book features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par