A Look at The Four Spent the Day Together by author Chris Kraus – An Iconic Writer Attempts New Ground
The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself 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 entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about 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 fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par