The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
