The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she states that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "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 fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
