The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.
Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care 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 accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
