The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
