The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with 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 jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
