The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story 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 fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books 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 Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers 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. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
