The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background
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 story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned 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 online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
