The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
