The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
