The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, 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 anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
