The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
