The Four Spent the Day Together from Chris Kraus – A Renowned Writer Ventures Into Something New

The new book is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par