The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story 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 new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
