The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
