The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist 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 experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting 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 account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
