The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much 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 United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
