On being a tragic obsessive completist weirdo about authors, musicians and directors

After a recent discussion with a friend about the film of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road – which we’d both seen recently after reading the book – I recommended she read McCarthy’s excellent Border Trilogy novels (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain).

I admitted in a text message later that when I find an author, musician or director I like I can often succumb to a kind of pathological need to track down their entire output and consume it in some obsessive kind of frenzy.

Tragic, obsessive, the best way to live life!

she texted back, making me feel like I wasn’t quite so weird.

It did get me thinking about how often I do this and have done since childhood. To prove it here’s a heavily edited list of highlights of some of the artists for whom I’ve had ‘periods’ (as in ‘my Scorcese period’). In roughly chronological order:

Authors

• Tom Wolfe
• Hunter S. Thompson
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Aldous Huxley
• Roald Dahl
• Peter Carey
• Tolkien
• (E.) Annie Proulx
• Andrew McGahan
• JK Rowling
• Ian McEwan
• Jasper Fforde

Musicians

• The Beatles
  This was definitely the first time I got obsessed with something from popular culture. I got this one early, around the age of eight, and it’s stayed with me to this day. (In the 1970s, before internet or even video, it was a lot harder to meet the needs of an obsessive – my main strategy revolved around checking out the record collections of any house we visited).
• Metallica
  For a few years in my teens I was a metalhead. There, I’ve said it. My friend at school introduced me to Metallica and, in a bizarre twist, within two years I ended up working at a metal magazine and interviewing drummer Lars Ulrich on the phone a couple of times during the making of their Black Album. I’m over it now, thank you very much.
• Hendrix
• Black Sabbath
• The Stooges
• The Rolling Stones
• The Ramones
• Sonic Youth
• Velvet Underground
• The Pixies
• John Spencer/Blues Explosion
• PJ Harvey
• You Am I
• Johnny Cash
• Jonathan Richman/Modern Lovers
• Holly Golightly
• The Magic Numbers
• Dylan
• Detroit Cobras
• The Shangri-Las
• The Drones
• Teenage Fanclub
• Dolly Parton
• Hoodoo Gurus
• Dirty Three
• Neko Case

Directors/TV

• John Waters
  When you’ve seen Pink Flamingoes you can hardly stop there, can you?
• Kubrick
  Ditto A Clockwork Orange
• Woody Allen
• Coen Brothers
• Mike Leigh
• Tarantino
• Scorcese
• Monty Python team
• David Chase
  Had to watch the entire Sopranos in chonological order
• Alan Ball
  As above with Six Feet Under

I can see that at least one of my children has inherited this disorder. Not sure whether I should be proud or worried..?