The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, 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. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, 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
