The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
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 resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
