The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative 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 hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
