Three and a half things I loved about "Positive Obsession"

Why did I pick Positive Obsession as July’s book of the month?

Because Susana Morris has produced an intriguing, enticing book that is somehow both all of the things and none of the things at the same time.

Yes, it is biography—but it’s neither the deterministic bio-lite that populates the shelves of many book stores, or the proctological investigation style of a Robert Caro-esque life. Yes, it is literary critique, looking over Octavia Butler’s work and the stories they tell at both a conceptual and line level, but it is not academic or exclusionary. And yes, it has a personal, almost memoirish tone in places, when Morris explains why Butler means so much to her, or her reaction to the books she’s discussing. But it is not just through the lens of a fan.

The balance of these elements seemed carefully weighted, but one question I had for myself when choosing this book was whether you needed to have read Octavia Butler’s books already to get it, to enjoy it, to understand it. 

The answer I came to (obviously, I suppose) is no, I don’t think so.

Does it help to be a Butler reader? Maybe! I can’t say. I’ve read a couple of Butler’s books, but I’m not very familiar with her work, and I didn’t think it diminished my enjoyment of Positive Obsession—or spoil any of the novels for me. In fact, I think one of the things I enjoyed most about what Morris did here was provide a biography, a primer and a deeper exploration of Butler’s work. She displays talent for describing just enough of a book to help you understand where it came from, without picking it to pieces or getting wildly mechanical. It made me want to read more Butler, not feel diminished from not having consumed them already.

There were other things I loved about Morris’s book, too. I thought it explained parts of Butler’s genius for seeing what was coming next. Parable of the Sower, for example, is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a tyrannical leader rules over a burning California. From our vantage point in a world of wildfires and a rightwing administration, this seems like soothsaying. It leaves you a little baffled at how she did it. 

Morris shows that Butler’s words seem prophetic because while she was very much beyond her time, she was also very much of her moment. As an author, Butler was supremely clever about characterizing the moment she was in, and had an uncanny ability to extrapolate and interrogate the current. Butler’s words seem prophetic not because she could see the future, but because she was characterizing the moment she was in. Sower was constructed from Butler’s now; built from her antipathy toward Ronald Reagan, and her insights into what motivated people. 

This has an extra benefit, too, of reminding me that there is nothing new under the sun. Butler, through Morris, gives us a salient reminder that whatever chaos we are in today is directly connected to where we were 20, 30, 40 years ago. What we did then is what generates the possibility space today; it is what shapes the landscape of now.

What comes through most of all, though, is how the book spoke to Butler’s dedication to her life as a writer. On first read I wondered if it wasn’t slightly lacking in biography. Butler’s life is all through the book, but it is quiet. There was her childhood, her letters, her struggle to make it as an author. None of these are straightforward, and there is change. But it is not loud. It does not subject us to the typical shapes of biographic formula—of unexpected trauma that informs the work, or turning points that layer a narrative arc on top of a life. Her death, when it comes, is not neat or somehow complete. It’s not the end of a story but an unexpected interruption in it.

But by the time I got to the end, I realized that this was the point. Biographers have a tendency to use hindsight and over-script a life so that all the pieces connect together somehow (I recently listened to a podcast about narrative history which I thought described some of this problem well.) Positive Obsession shows how everything else in Butler’s life—the sadness, the loneliness, the disappointments— was because she traded it all in for her work. Her outer world may have been small, but that’s because her inner worlds were so large. 

And that is more than enough.

Until next time

Bobbie