YOUR BIGGEST FAN

In Rosenholtz’s epistolary novel, a desperate man reveals his psychological unraveling across a series of fan letters to Taylor Swift.

An unnamed 53-year-old high school English teacher and self-avowed music snob is shocked when he discovers how deeply he enjoys the Taylor Swift album Red (Taylor’s Version), which he listens to accidentally one day on his commute to work—his 13-year-old daughter, Allie, loves TS, of course, but the man is shocked that the music of the pop star speaks to him on such an elemental level. Soon he is listening to nothing else, declaring his car a “TS-only zone” in which his daughters’ other musical requests are not allowed. He embarks on what he calls the “Year of TS,” listening to Swift’s albums in chronological order and assimilating them into his being. “And then there’s Folklore—to be honest, I don’t even say the album’s title aloud, just as I never let my students say ‘Macbeth’ when we’re reading Shakespeare’s Scottish play,” gushes the man, who, because the novel is formatted as fan letters, always addresses Swift in the second person. “I feel unworthy of passing the word through my lips. The most perfect of your perfect albums.” By the time Midnights arrives in the fall of 2022, the man is so obsessed that he stays up until 3 a.m. to download the bonus content despite having to teach the next day. As he recounts his love for Swift’s music, the deleterious effects of his obsession on his life—from his work to his ability to drive to his relationship with his daughters—are increasingly apparent. The letters become more unhinged as time goes on, revealing the desperate fears and irrational dreams of a man on the edge of oblivion.

The author’s narrative voice is deviously comic, with glimmers of mania shining through the generally polite and friendly prose: “Sometimes, your music has even resulted in me losing my temper just a little, typically when anything or anyone comes between me and my enjoyment of you. I tend, for example, to yell quite vigorously at the woman with the disembodied voice who lives deep inside my car’s sound system whenever she interrupts the soothing sounds of your voice.” As the narrator discusses the fact that he and Swift share a birthday or speculates as to whether or not she has read Kurt Vonnegut, the sad realities of the narrator’s life are slowly revealed, such as how his wife kicked him out of the house and how his daughters are embarrassed that he cries whenever certain TS songs come on. Rosenholtz skillfully deploys the phenomenon of fandom—and Taylor Swift fandom in particular—to paint a detailed portrait of a lost soul for whom obsession serves as a kind of life jacket. The premise is a fun one, but it is slightly one-note; though the novel extends to only 220-odd pages, the idea loses some of its steam before the end. Perhaps because the narrator is ultimately so difficult to relate to, the book ends up feeling more like a lengthy black-humor piece than a work of psychological fiction.

A manic and often funny investigation of fandom.