The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
