The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness 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 become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
