Week Nine: All Fours
AUG. 7, 2024 • CAMP TOB WEEK NINE
All Fours
first half discussion
Welcome to our final month of Camp ToB 2024. This week we’re introducing our late summer vibe (“how to marry yourself”), our next summer read (Miranda July’s All Fours), and Activity Leader Charity—who’s here to guide us through part one of the book!
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A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.
This has been excerpted from the publisher’s summary and edited for length.
Hello Charity, thank you for joining us at Camp ToB! Please tell us where you’re writing from and how long you’ve followed the Tournament of Books.
I live in Southern California, and I’ve followed the ToB since 2020.
Excellent, and can you tell us about what you like to read?
I used to read literary fiction almost exclusively, but in the past few years I’ve rediscovered a love for horror (I was the fifth grader reading all the Poe and King I could get my hands on but moved away from scary books for several years), and learned that I quite enjoy well-crafted mysteries and thrillers. I also really love weird novels, like those written by Mona Awad, Ottessa Moshfegh, Kelly Link, Lauren Beukes, and Helen Oyeyemi.
Ooohh, nice. All right then, let’s get started with this week’s discussion—here are Charity’s discussion questions for part one of the book. See you in the comments!
1.
The idea of Parkers and Drivers comes up several times in this section. Which are you? Or do you reject the construct?
How does this idea influence the narrator’s decision to stop at the motel—and to keep stopping at the motel?
What is the role of location in this novel? Could the story happen in another location in the United States, or is it necessarily a Southern California story?
2.
In chapter 6, the narrator says about midlife: “Although maybe midlife crises were just poorly marketed, maybe each one was profound and unique and it was only a few silly men in red convertibles who gave them a bad name” (p. 54). This reminds me of some things Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote about midlife in the “Oyster Bed” essay from her Gift From the Sea:
Perhaps one can at last in middle age, if not earlier, be completely oneself. And what a liberation that would be!...For is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence?
How do you view midlife? If you’re already there or through this stage, does the disequilibrium the narrator describes and/or the “second flowering” Lindbergh describes resonate with you?
If you’ve yet to reach this stage, how do you view midlife and the changes that happen during this period of life? How do you think society views this stage of life?
3.
The narrator repeatedly suggests that she desires a closer emotional intimacy with Harris. She reflects back to the time when Sam was in the NICU and she and Harris were united, and she longs for an undefined future time when they will once again be this close, although there’s also fear in this as she seems to expect it will require a “cataclysmic event” to bring them together (p. 64).
What do you think keeps her from attempting to be closer now rather than waiting? Why is she committed to staying in her partnership with Harris even when she doesn’t feel like he knows her, she wants to take another lover, and she assumes that he is having an affair?
(Related question: Do you think Harris is having an affair?)
4.
How do you feel about the story—and the main character—at the end of part one?