The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
