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

This latest work is populated with characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, 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