The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
