This latest work features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Three Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.
As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.
Obsession and Unfinished Business
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
