The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus – An Iconic Writer Attempts Something New

The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par