The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around 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 hers, exactly."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about 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 repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
