The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
