The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
