The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. 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. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
