Obsession

I think of myself as being as susceptible to winding up an obsessed fan as the average person. For example, I am a sucker for all things Beatles; imagine my distress when I discovered that the newly remastered "Beatles in Mono" boxed set was already sold out at Amazon, and the cheapest it seems to be available elsewhere is for around $400! I read books about the celebrities I like or admire, from Ernest Hemingway to Joni Mitchell. I have a Starbucks DIY tumbler with pictures of Jeremy Piven (at right) all over it. I have mini-posters of 2001 and Casablanca in my cubicle. And, of course, there are my idle crushes on people I only know through Facebook or Twitter (they're like my own private celebrities).

But really, I've realized over the years that I don't have the makings of a truly obsessive fan. I don't intend to pay $400 for the Beatles set; I don't buy new Joni Mitchell albums anymore, and I still haven't gotten around to reading "For Whom the Bell Tolls"; I have no desire to see Piven's latest movie, The Goods; I refused to buy the latest upgrade of Casablanca on DVD; I don't have it in me to become a danger to casual Internet contacts, or even to become much of a pest.

If I wasn't aware of all this before, I certainly am now after reading My Judy Garland Life by British author Susie Boyt. This odd, entertaining, but unsettling little book is part Garland biography and part memoir of Boyt's life. The author was born in 1969, just a few months before Garland's untimely death, and she discovered Garland via "Over the Rainbow"; since then, there's been no turning back. She calls the feeling she has for Garland "hero-worship," perhaps because she admires Garland for overcoming so many obstacles in her private life and giving joy to millions through her acting and singing, even if she was ultimately unable to survive in the face of her problems with drugs and personal relationships.

But to me, the feeling seems more like an overwhelming fixation on Garland. Boyt thinks about her all the time, imagining scenarios in which she could have become a part of Garland's life and helped her out by running her errands or making her dresses, nurturing activities that would have made her know she was loved. This extends to having similar feelings for Liza Minnelli--I half-understand that impulse, as even I root for Liza from afar, feeling oddly sorry for her as someone who could never quite get out from under the burden of being Judy's daughter. Early on, Boyt tells us she has a husband and a daughter, and a couple different jobs, including grief counselor, but if those passages were edited out of the book, I would assume she was a dreadfully lonely overweight loner who has no life except what she can imagine through the figure of Judy Garland. She also writes about her fellow fanatics, calling them "Judy-friends" (and remarkably only one of them is a gay man).

Boyt identifies with Judy in a number of ways: she wanted to be an entertainer but was constantly stymied in her attempts; she grew up in a single-parent household (though she did eventually have some contact with her father); she was put through incredible grief when her boyfriend was killed just before they were to be married. Her obsession with Garland seems to be a way to work through some of these problems, though to be honest, even though she shares a number of anecdotes about herself, they are disjointed and rather vague, and though the book is called a memoir, Boyt rarely comes into strong focus.

Most critics like this book, and some even mention its camp value, but for me, the total lack of camp value is the real problem with it. I kept waiting for some sense that Boyt knows how odd this obsession (or "hero-worship," as she calls it) is for an adult, but there's no distancing device used, no sense of irony or humor or high camp, not when she lovingly goes through Garland's make-up trunk, not when she imagines that ironing Judy's sheets might have made her feel more loved, not even when she contemplates stealing cigarette butts from Liza Minnelli's ashtray.

To her credit, there are bits of humor here and there, she does write a bit about the nature of obsession, and she includes an answer she got to a questionnaire about fan's feelings for Garland that said, "Your questions are really creepy"--and actually, they are. The anecdotes about Garland's life are interesting (best tidbit: that Judy could appear an emotional wreck with her audience clapping and weeping during an "Over the Rainbow" finale, but then whisper to little Liza, who came rushing onstage to comfort her mother, "Wanna send out for Chinese tonight?"), but overall the experience of reading this book is a little uncomfortable. I wound up feeling about Boyt like she felt about Judy; I'd like to pat her on the back and say, "Susie, things will be OK. Can Jeremy Piven and I fold your blankets for you?"