The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
