The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
