The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
