The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
