The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
