The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to meet 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 having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
