The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder 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 Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
