The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form 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 significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
As a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
