This latest work is populated with characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.
From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work
Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.
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 pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.
From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."
Disappointment and Disjunction
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex 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 killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par
