The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
