The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the 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 housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim 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 town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
