The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
