The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step 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 appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
