The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions 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 could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
