The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when 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 alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
