The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus – A Renowned Writer Explores Fresh Territory

This latest work is populated with characters seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. But then it proves 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 entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour 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 amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par