The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 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 is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
