The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, 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 a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
