The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
