The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
