The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence 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 mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered 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
The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
