The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation 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 spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated 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. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
