The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
