The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself 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 entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
