The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
