The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
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 letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
