This latest work features protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is 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 addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled 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 the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned 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 the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit 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 in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
