Exploring The Four Spent the Day Together from Chris Kraus – A Cult Writer Ventures Into Fresh Territory

The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par