The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
