The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally 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 following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source 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 anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
