The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice 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 housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "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 Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation 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 in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
