The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
