The new book features individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.
Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background
The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.
As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma 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 persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol 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 most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
