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

This latest work is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par