The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates 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 destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
