The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer began as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. 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 ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid 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 anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
