The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
