The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic
The writer began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
