Gloria Vanderbilt’s novella, Obsession, makes for a curious and stimulating read. But it’s not the kind of stimulating read you might expect from an erotic work. Rather, it’s more of an intellectual exercise in emotional intelligence in the guise of erotic read.
I’d seen all the buzz about Vanderbilt’s novel and I no doubt wanted to read it. After all, I’d like to think that when I’m Vanderbilt’s age, I’d be capable of writing intriguing and provocative fiction. And when I met Gloria Vanderbilt at her BEA book signing, she graciously told me that this book meant a great deal to her. Granted, she was probably indulging me in the social graces she’s known for, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t sincere.
I’m not sure what I expected when I cracked the spine and opened Obsession. I’d heard about its BDSM content and the speculation that always arises when an author explores out-of-the-mainstream sexuality. What I got was an entertaining and challenging read.
Beginning as a semi-epistolary work, Obsession details the repressed widow Priscilla Bingham’s discovery of a cache of letters that reveals her late husband’s extramarital kinky endeavors. Each letter is more explicit and detailed than its predecessor and draws you in to a secret world of covert sexual extravagance. Written by Priscilla’s rival, the mysterious, sexually-free Bee, the letters seem to pose a side of her late husband that Priscilla never knew.
A New York Times article about Vanderbilt’s book poses whether Bee is a figment of Priscilla’s imagination or vice versa. But I think there’s something deeper going on here. As I read the book its prose became increasingly dream-like. Alternating between Priscilla and be, it seemed to nearly become a fugue.
And then it struck me: Perhaps I was seeing two sides of the same coin. Wife and mistress, Madonna and whore, doppelgangers of a single self, split apart by the agony of grief. Perhaps Priscilla and Bee are the Ego and the Id, respectively, each driven to seek the other, not out of jealousy but because, unable to survive alone, continued life is only assured by their ultimate reunion.
The world in which Bee exists – and that which Priscilla wants to access – is, in fact, the Janus club. And Janus is the Roman god of doorways a two-faced deity whose visages peers out in opposite directions. More than once, Janus has served to a represent BDSM practices, and here, I suspect, it symbolizes the doorway through which the divided selves can step through and rediscover one another.
Of course, my theory could be total hogwash. Vanderbilt has reportedly written and recorded a new ending for Obsession in audio book form, presumably a less abrupt and more expansive conclusion. But any book that can make you stop and wonder what it’s really all about, what’s really underneath the facade of sexual extravagance, is a book worth reading. And I’m still struck by the sense of wonder whenever I think about Gloria Vanderbilt’s Obsession.
