The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics 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, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
