This latest work is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work
Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
As a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
