The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied 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 Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
