The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit 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 in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
