The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion 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 social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
