The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
