The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
