The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative 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 makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
