The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
