The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.
As a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation 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 passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
