The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
