The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
