The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
As a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
