The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
