The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
