The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks 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 overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
