The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear 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 Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States 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 eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
