The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting 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 narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems 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 United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid 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. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
