A Look at The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus – A Cult Writer Attempts New Ground
This latest work centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
