The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
