The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named 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 with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated 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 go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
