The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
