The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner 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 her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates 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
