The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
