The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
