The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
