The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
