The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she states that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par