The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
