The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named 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 having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
