The new book features individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
