The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued 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 personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
