The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative 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 considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. 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 the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
