The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
