The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
