This latest work is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.
Several Eras, 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. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par
