The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
