The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
