The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says 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 fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges 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 Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
