Obsession, real obsession, is not how you feel about labradoodles or Cool Ranch Doritos or even something truly great, like the poems of Richard Siken. Real obsession has tendons and guts and, and, and consequences. This new usage wants to steal the stakes of real obsession, and apply those stakes to something consumed. As a dedicated obsessive, I resent this! Yet this fandom, mysteriously, doesn’t make us more likely to prioritize the work over the biography. When what you like becomes important, becomes defining, becomes an obsession, then an artist’s biography has even more power than
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