The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
