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

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband 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 a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par