The new book features characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, 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 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.
Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Killing Story
So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
