The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
