The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing 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 not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
