The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus began as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
