The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
