The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten 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 earlier works returns in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" 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 America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
