What do you think?
Rate this book
On Series (Little Books, Big Ideas)
On Obsession
Part of a series that pairs leading Australian thinkers and cultural figures with important themes in life, this essay contemplates obsession. Discussing topics such as love, Marcel Proust, soul mates in fiction, numerical palindromes, and bloodlines, among other fixations, this personal examination explores the fine line that divides enthusiasm from obsession and wonders if obsessions lead to a retreat from life.
96 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2010
25 people want to read
About the author
Malcolm Knox
36 books48 followersMalcolm Knox was born in 1966. He grew up in Sydney and studied in Sydney and Scotland, where his one-act play, POLEMARCHUS, was performed in St Andrews and Edinburgh. He has worked for the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD since 1994 and his journalism has been published in Australia, Britain, India and the West Indies.
His first novel Summerland was published to great acclaim in the UK, US, Australia and Europe in 2000. In 2001 Malcolm was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian novelists. He lives in Sydney with his wife Wenona, son Callum and daughter Lilian. His most recent novel, A Private Man, was critically acclaimed and was shortlisted for the Commomwealth Prize and the Tasmanian Premier’s Award.
His first novel Summerland was published to great acclaim in the UK, US, Australia and Europe in 2000. In 2001 Malcolm was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian novelists. He lives in Sydney with his wife Wenona, son Callum and daughter Lilian. His most recent novel, A Private Man, was critically acclaimed and was shortlisted for the Commomwealth Prize and the Tasmanian Premier’s Award.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 23, 2012
My Obsession
This is a short book in an unusual format, say 110 pages and just small enough to hold in your handbag and read on the way to and from work.
I read it in a couple of hours and loved it.
When I finished, I went up to my wife, FM Sushi, and held it out in front of me like an offering.
"If you read this book, you will understand obsession."
She looked at me. "Yes?"
"If you understand obsession, you will understand my obsession."
Now she was staring at me more intently, almost scornfully. "Yes?"
"If you understand my obsession, you will understand me."
Her face softened and she laughed. She laughed at me. "Honey, I don’t need to read this book. I am your wife. I know the meaning of obsession. I live with you."
I retreated to the study and started to write this review.
If you read this review, you will understand me.
My Own Private Self
Malcolm Knox starts his essay with a description of his maternal grandfather, someone who appeared to be respectable and content, but who actually had a hidden life, documented in a box containing private notes and musings (mostly about his obsession, the weather), "pregnant with unseen life".
Malcolm inherits some of his qualities, the focus, the string of autodidactic enthusiasms, a trance-like power of concentration, a ferocity in his devotion, an enduring passion for books, the desire to read everything, later whittled down to a more realistic desire to read all of the significant novels ever written.
Before he is 20, he encounters Samuel Butler, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Thomas Mann and, finally, Proust, whom he has read three times in his life to date.
He marvels that someone like Proust can know him like he does.
"He consoled me for falling in love with women who could never make me happy and whom I didn’t even like. It was not a burden I had to carry alone. If nobody understood my pain, then I had a friend in Charles Swann."
Obsessive Love
Malcolm continues to obsess about women in real life:
"...the pattern for my obsessions [was] blithe girls, indifferent to my subtle charms, noisy and vivacious and full of themselves, promiscuous with others if not me, boisterous good-timers who, if I ever let slip that I was in love with them, would tear me to shreds with their pitying generous laughter."
Still, he fixes on them, he fixates on them, he desires to possess them, to incorporate them into his life with some degree of fixity. Instead, they flood his consciousness and they torment him.
Proust explains:
"Few people understand either the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon of love, or how it creates a supplementary person who is quite different from the one who bears our beloved’s name in the outside world, and is mostly formed from elements within ourselves…
"This Albertine was little more than an outline: everything else that had been added to her was of my own making, for our own contribution to our love…is greater than that of the person we love."
The Object of My Obsession is Not Enough
Paradoxically, the object of our obsession does us no good, it harms us like an addiction, it doesn’t make us happy.
Proust on Gilberte:
"Since I loved her, I could only ever see her through the confused desire for more of her, which when you are with the person you love, deprives you of the feeling of loving…though I thought of nothing else but of not going a single day without seeing Gilberte...yet those moments when I was with her and which since the day before I had been awaiting so impatiently, for which I had trembled, for which I would have sacrificed everything else, were in no way happy moments."
His obsession gave him "not one atom of pleasure", no joy.
Real Live Girls, Here
Malcolm Knox starts to realise that his embrace of Proust actually glorifies the worst of his own self-pity:
"What I saw as a quest for purity was, in retrospect, a retreat from life. If I could bury myself in a lifelong quest, then…it could relieve me of wondering what to do. If I could immerse my romantic life in a poetry of suffering, I could glorify, through literature, my basic cowardice…
"Single-mindedness is our kind of trance. It is our vacation. When we are lost in our dream, our time is accounted for, we…are on a holiday in our own company, hidden in plain view. The one-track mind is our fortress, our safety zone...It is the most pointless thing, and all the more seductive for its pointlessness."
The challenge is how to stop obsessing.
Then, he comes to the ultimate realization:
"Instead of floating out of my depth with Proust…I should have talked with and listened to more real live girls."
He even wonders whether Proust himself intended his work to have a comic tone that has been underestimated to date.
An Obsession with Family, Instead of a Family with Obsessions
Ironically, Knox was never able to come to this realization within his own life.
It is only when he sees his six-year old son mimicking his own qualities, that he sees obsession for what it really is.
This book, then, is his attempt to say to his son and to us that we should be neither too proud nor too afraid to deal with the underlying reality of our obsessions.
We owe it not just to ourselves, but to those around us.
Because, just as we are like our parents, our children are like us.
True Love
Knox doesn't attempt to define true love. We have to arrive at our own definition.
I suspect that it's less possessive, less impatient, less ferocious, less single-minded than obsession.
Perhaps it's the product of time, space, openness, mutuality, reciprocity, sharing, patience, respect, encouragement, care, affection, admiration, humour, gentleness and two minds acting in unison. [I didn't set out to create a list, but I see that one emerged anyway.]
Love is an activity, not a state. It's a verb, not a noun (even if, um, my list is all nouns and gerunds). It's something you do, not something that happens to you.
As my two teenaged daughters would say, "Whatever, Dad, just do it."
SOUNDTRACK:
Monty Python - Summarize Proust Competition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwAOc4...
[Note the two different pronunciations of "Proust".]
Alan Rickman - Proust Recitation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKcRpY...
Alan Rickman - Being Sexy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=...
Why can't I find a copy of "Truly Madly Deeply"?
Alan Rickman - Kissing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDJXMU...
ABC - "All Of My Heart"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfph30...
Savage Garden - "Truly Madly Deeply"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Dg1Y...
GLEE - Full Performance of "Everybody Talks"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_2iXM...
"Hey baby won't you look my way
I can be your new addiction
Hey baby what you gotta say?
All you're giving me is fiction."
[Rhyme of the Century]
This is a short book in an unusual format, say 110 pages and just small enough to hold in your handbag and read on the way to and from work.
I read it in a couple of hours and loved it.
When I finished, I went up to my wife, FM Sushi, and held it out in front of me like an offering.
"If you read this book, you will understand obsession."
She looked at me. "Yes?"
"If you understand obsession, you will understand my obsession."
Now she was staring at me more intently, almost scornfully. "Yes?"
"If you understand my obsession, you will understand me."
Her face softened and she laughed. She laughed at me. "Honey, I don’t need to read this book. I am your wife. I know the meaning of obsession. I live with you."
I retreated to the study and started to write this review.
If you read this review, you will understand me.
My Own Private Self
Malcolm Knox starts his essay with a description of his maternal grandfather, someone who appeared to be respectable and content, but who actually had a hidden life, documented in a box containing private notes and musings (mostly about his obsession, the weather), "pregnant with unseen life".
Malcolm inherits some of his qualities, the focus, the string of autodidactic enthusiasms, a trance-like power of concentration, a ferocity in his devotion, an enduring passion for books, the desire to read everything, later whittled down to a more realistic desire to read all of the significant novels ever written.
Before he is 20, he encounters Samuel Butler, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Thomas Mann and, finally, Proust, whom he has read three times in his life to date.
He marvels that someone like Proust can know him like he does.
"He consoled me for falling in love with women who could never make me happy and whom I didn’t even like. It was not a burden I had to carry alone. If nobody understood my pain, then I had a friend in Charles Swann."
Obsessive Love
Malcolm continues to obsess about women in real life:
"...the pattern for my obsessions [was] blithe girls, indifferent to my subtle charms, noisy and vivacious and full of themselves, promiscuous with others if not me, boisterous good-timers who, if I ever let slip that I was in love with them, would tear me to shreds with their pitying generous laughter."
Still, he fixes on them, he fixates on them, he desires to possess them, to incorporate them into his life with some degree of fixity. Instead, they flood his consciousness and they torment him.
Proust explains:
"Few people understand either the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon of love, or how it creates a supplementary person who is quite different from the one who bears our beloved’s name in the outside world, and is mostly formed from elements within ourselves…
"This Albertine was little more than an outline: everything else that had been added to her was of my own making, for our own contribution to our love…is greater than that of the person we love."
The Object of My Obsession is Not Enough
Paradoxically, the object of our obsession does us no good, it harms us like an addiction, it doesn’t make us happy.
Proust on Gilberte:
"Since I loved her, I could only ever see her through the confused desire for more of her, which when you are with the person you love, deprives you of the feeling of loving…though I thought of nothing else but of not going a single day without seeing Gilberte...yet those moments when I was with her and which since the day before I had been awaiting so impatiently, for which I had trembled, for which I would have sacrificed everything else, were in no way happy moments."
His obsession gave him "not one atom of pleasure", no joy.
Real Live Girls, Here
Malcolm Knox starts to realise that his embrace of Proust actually glorifies the worst of his own self-pity:
"What I saw as a quest for purity was, in retrospect, a retreat from life. If I could bury myself in a lifelong quest, then…it could relieve me of wondering what to do. If I could immerse my romantic life in a poetry of suffering, I could glorify, through literature, my basic cowardice…
"Single-mindedness is our kind of trance. It is our vacation. When we are lost in our dream, our time is accounted for, we…are on a holiday in our own company, hidden in plain view. The one-track mind is our fortress, our safety zone...It is the most pointless thing, and all the more seductive for its pointlessness."
The challenge is how to stop obsessing.
Then, he comes to the ultimate realization:
"Instead of floating out of my depth with Proust…I should have talked with and listened to more real live girls."
He even wonders whether Proust himself intended his work to have a comic tone that has been underestimated to date.
An Obsession with Family, Instead of a Family with Obsessions
Ironically, Knox was never able to come to this realization within his own life.
It is only when he sees his six-year old son mimicking his own qualities, that he sees obsession for what it really is.
This book, then, is his attempt to say to his son and to us that we should be neither too proud nor too afraid to deal with the underlying reality of our obsessions.
We owe it not just to ourselves, but to those around us.
Because, just as we are like our parents, our children are like us.
True Love
Knox doesn't attempt to define true love. We have to arrive at our own definition.
I suspect that it's less possessive, less impatient, less ferocious, less single-minded than obsession.
Perhaps it's the product of time, space, openness, mutuality, reciprocity, sharing, patience, respect, encouragement, care, affection, admiration, humour, gentleness and two minds acting in unison. [I didn't set out to create a list, but I see that one emerged anyway.]
Love is an activity, not a state. It's a verb, not a noun (even if, um, my list is all nouns and gerunds). It's something you do, not something that happens to you.
As my two teenaged daughters would say, "Whatever, Dad, just do it."
SOUNDTRACK:
Monty Python - Summarize Proust Competition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwAOc4...
[Note the two different pronunciations of "Proust".]
Alan Rickman - Proust Recitation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKcRpY...
Alan Rickman - Being Sexy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=...
Why can't I find a copy of "Truly Madly Deeply"?
Alan Rickman - Kissing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDJXMU...
ABC - "All Of My Heart"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfph30...
Savage Garden - "Truly Madly Deeply"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Dg1Y...
GLEE - Full Performance of "Everybody Talks"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_2iXM...
"Hey baby won't you look my way
I can be your new addiction
Hey baby what you gotta say?
All you're giving me is fiction."
[Rhyme of the Century]
December 24, 2012
At the time of reading (i.e. right now), this really resonates with me. I can identify myself in Knox's obsessive and addictive personality, and consequently with Proust.
"...one of those lovers who hum to themselves the mantra of their beloved's name and burn with anxiety over what that person is doing at any given moment."
[Interesting side-note]: Knox's discussion that obsessive love can lead to violence when one wants to completely possess their object of affection reminded me strongly of Othello.
However, Knox doesn't seem to have a lot of good things to say about Alain de Botton, so that is something for me to consider. Also, perhaps read some Proust in my life.
"...one of those lovers who hum to themselves the mantra of their beloved's name and burn with anxiety over what that person is doing at any given moment."
[Interesting side-note]: Knox's discussion that obsessive love can lead to violence when one wants to completely possess their object of affection reminded me strongly of Othello.
However, Knox doesn't seem to have a lot of good things to say about Alain de Botton, so that is something for me to consider. Also, perhaps read some Proust in my life.
June 8, 2018
To me, Malcolm Knox is a cricket writer and a very good one. He's also a novelist, a field I rarely enter. Here, he produces a slim text, around the size of my extended hand, on an interesting theme. "Obsession" by Jack Bruce from his A Question of Time album from last century captures a particular aspect of the topic and its tensions.
Knox starts with his grandfather Roy, whose meticulous and spare diary keeping (the weather is a theme) kept at a distance from his wife and others makes him wonder about what's not written, suppressed if you like. Stories about him are included as an additive to speculation.
As a person whose maternal grandmother and elderly mother kept/keep such slim tomes (there's a collection in the shed) I wondered about Knox's labelling of this activity, although noting the temperatures of the day from the news (more than one service) at night is a meticulous practice of my mother, and not to be interrupted.
Knox moves on to his own father who had to complete things before moving on. Nothing else was of importance, even a family meal and he would sometimes explode in anger/frustration as though it was a task imposed on him with frightful consequences. Otherwise the father was benign, it seems. He then uses a comment made by his father in a document from work in which he admitted to "no confidence around women" to discuss his relevant issues in the same field, along with a short discourse about addiction related to research he did for a company at one point. It's a pretty rubbery topic, he finds.
His discourse on personal difficulties with women – being "obsessed" with them as it were, and in various ways – aren't driven by hate or anything like that as we might read today about "incels" and the like. There appears nothing like that. In some respects it appears an experience of not knowing what to do next, even not knowing whether someone actually likes you, or not. Various personal disasters are described, without rancor, but also the current situation of being married with children.
Knox never really analyses these issues therapeutically, other than his short excursus into addiction and so it's a kind of memoir/thought piece. His prose is easy to read and, without timing yourself – that might be a little obsessive –you could probably read it in an hour or so
Knox starts with his grandfather Roy, whose meticulous and spare diary keeping (the weather is a theme) kept at a distance from his wife and others makes him wonder about what's not written, suppressed if you like. Stories about him are included as an additive to speculation.
As a person whose maternal grandmother and elderly mother kept/keep such slim tomes (there's a collection in the shed) I wondered about Knox's labelling of this activity, although noting the temperatures of the day from the news (more than one service) at night is a meticulous practice of my mother, and not to be interrupted.
Knox moves on to his own father who had to complete things before moving on. Nothing else was of importance, even a family meal and he would sometimes explode in anger/frustration as though it was a task imposed on him with frightful consequences. Otherwise the father was benign, it seems. He then uses a comment made by his father in a document from work in which he admitted to "no confidence around women" to discuss his relevant issues in the same field, along with a short discourse about addiction related to research he did for a company at one point. It's a pretty rubbery topic, he finds.
His discourse on personal difficulties with women – being "obsessed" with them as it were, and in various ways – aren't driven by hate or anything like that as we might read today about "incels" and the like. There appears nothing like that. In some respects it appears an experience of not knowing what to do next, even not knowing whether someone actually likes you, or not. Various personal disasters are described, without rancor, but also the current situation of being married with children.
Knox never really analyses these issues therapeutically, other than his short excursus into addiction and so it's a kind of memoir/thought piece. His prose is easy to read and, without timing yourself – that might be a little obsessive –you could probably read it in an hour or so
June 3, 2023
I definetely wrote down great ideas from this book, it gave me a new perspective and deepened my understanding of why someone enjoys obsession with someone else, even if its one sided. We all find ways to avoid experiencing the pains of life, obsession is one strategy to avoid feeling pain of heartbreak, abandonment or rejection... amongst other things. interesting
March 31, 2021
Beautiful essay on life, love and growing into your skin
October 4, 2014
I went to my local library's book sale and was short on cash to buy this book, so a kind lady gave me $2. Interesting read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews