The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much 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 United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has 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 sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
