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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par