The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn 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 victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
