The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
