The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer 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 intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
