The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it 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 narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells 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 hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
