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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par