The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic
The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. 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 online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim 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, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
