The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics 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 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
