The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
