The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
