The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
