A Look at The Four Spent the Day Together from author Chris Kraus – A Cult Writer Explores Fresh Territory

This latest work is populated with characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much 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 nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par