The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided 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 piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment 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 Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
