The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet 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, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
