The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par