The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
