The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
