This latest work centers on individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book
Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.
Several Eras, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.
For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.
As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt 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 replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet 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, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. 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 extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
