The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
