The new book features protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.
Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself 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 curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".
The Homicide Account
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
