The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
