The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
