The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this appears a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
