The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse 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 liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when 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 alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
