The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
