The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
