The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become 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 different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
