The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
