The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing 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 variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us 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 her narrative ends almost mid-par
