The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. 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 murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
