The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied 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 a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
