The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
