The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive 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 role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story 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 wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
