The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
