The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
