The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
