The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed 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 Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
