The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled 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 investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated 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. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
