The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
