The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named 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 story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
