The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues 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 responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
