The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to 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 significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
