The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
