The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
