The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
