The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
