The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. 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, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
