The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out 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 confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice 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 considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" 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 researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
