The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
