The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists seeking clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. 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 chose to begin anew" recur in the text. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene 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 her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
