The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
