The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist 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 explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Killing Story
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
