The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
