The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
