The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
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 audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
