A Look at The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus – A Cult Writer Explores New Ground

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par