The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
