The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "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 new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
