The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted 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 invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
