The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative 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 hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
