I Hope He Likes Pepperoni
So I’m halfway through Housekeeping vs. the Dirt
In The Polysyllabic Spree
Nick Hornby is one of those rare writers who makes me literally laugh out loud. I’m sure it’s quite annoying to be in the same room with me when I’m reading one of his books. Even more annoyingly, I can’t help but read out passages to Scott or Jane or anyone passing through the room. (Huck has been known to burst into tears after the first sentence, but Mr. Hornby shouldn’t take it personally. After all, Huck still finds his own fingers vaguely alarming.)
Nick Hornby also makes me really, really want to read a lot of books. He writes so engagingly about the books he’s reading that you can’t help it, you want to read them yourself. And then you’d like to have him over for pizza and a nice long confab about where he was completely off base, and where he steered you correctly. I have this persistent and somewhat adolescent notion that Nick Hornby and Scott would really hit it off. They’re both readers and thinkers, both full of snark. And I do very well in conversations populated by that sort of person. Also they’ve been linked in my mind for a very long time, ever since Scott and I saw the movie High Fidelity, which was based on Hornby’s novel of the same name. (The film starred John Cusack, and he too is someone I’m convinced would enjoy our company. Also his sister Joan, and Jack Black, both of whom appeared with Cusack in High Fidelity. Also Wil Wheaton. Also Steve from Blue’s Clues. But not Joe.)
A passage in Polysyllabic Spree illustrates exactly why High Fidelity linked Scott and Nick (I can call him Nick, can’t I? Since we’re having pizza together?) in my mind. He’s talking about a book he’d just read, Zoe Heller’s Notes on a Scandal, and how he was enjoying the book until—
“a character starts talking about football. He tells a teaching colleague that he’s been to see Arsenal, and that ‘Arsenal won Liverpool 3-0.’ Readers of this column will have realized by now that I know almost nothing about anything, but if I were forced to declare one area of expertise, it would be what people say to each other after football matches. It’s not much, I know, but it’s mine. And I am positive that no one has ever said ‘Arsenal won Liverpool 3-0’ in the entire history of either Arsenal Football Club or the English language. ‘Beat,’ ‘thrashed,’ ‘did or done,’ ‘trounced,’ ‘thumped’—”
—he goes on in this vein a while, and asserts that no one would ever, ever use the word “won” in that context, and that furthermore, “Arsenal haven’t beaten Liverpool 3-0 at Highbury since 1991. What chance,” he asks regarding the author’s likelihood of winning him over as a reader, “did the poor woman have?”
By the end of this passage, I’m sure I had a very silly grin on my face, it tickled me so. Because, you see, there’s this bit in High Fidelity. John Cusack plays a guy who owns a record shop, and Jack Black works there and is very snobby about whom he’ll sell certain records to; you have to be worthy of the music and your worth is proved by your opinions about other music. These record shop guys are the kind of people who know every detail there is to know about the content and production of the entire body of work of pretty much every band ever. And at one point in the movie, John Cusack puts a Springsteen album on a record player, and carefully sets the needle onto the first track, and “The River” begins to play. And in the movie theater when we saw this film in college, Scott leaned over and whispered to me: “That’s the wrong track. It’s the last song on the second side of the first LP.” And I was filled with an enormous and terrible affection for him that has not abated one iota in all these years.
So that’s why I think Scott and Nick Hornby would get along. They understand being passionate about a thing, and that God is in the details.
I have to send Spree back to the library tomorrow. I’ve been holding on to it because I want to make a list of the books it made me want to read. And I thought this post was going to be a list of those books, but it turned out to be something else. It’s too long a list, anyway. I remember George and Sam, a book about author Charlotte Moore’s two autistic sons (which resonated with Hornby, I mean Nick, because he also has a child with autism), and a Robert Lowell biography, and there were about twenty others. But perhaps it’s a little too meta to write about the many books this one book made me want to read, and why. You’re much better off getting it directly from the horse’s mouth.
I hope Nick Hornby won’t be annoyed that I called him a horse. With luck he’ll have forgotten about it by the time he comes over for pizza.
Betty and Boo's Mommy says:
Great post! Nick’s been on my list to read for some time. I didn’t know he had a son with autism.
On April 18, 2009 at 7:30 am
Jennifer says:
No, not Joe.
On April 18, 2009 at 7:32 am
Faith says:
I tried to read one of Hornby’s books. I think it was called How To Be Good. I thought it was dreadfully depressing but trying very hard to be witty and profound.
But if you like him, maybe I should give him another try.
On April 18, 2009 at 9:38 am
Melissa Wiley says:
Was that the one where the guy does a midlife crisis buy-a-sportscar thing in the opening chapters? Because I tried to read that one, and I couldn’t, it was too depressing. Infidelity plots always turn me off. (Except in the movie Cousins, which I love beyond reason and despite its being against my moral principles.)
About Hornby, here’s the thing: I’ve never read any of his fiction. If he ever does come for pizza, I’m sure to embarrass myself by gushing about About a Boy, the movie version of which I’ve seen at least eight times, and the plot of which Scott tells me diverges quite a lot from the plot of Hornby’s novel. I can totally see myself saying things like “I love the part where” and it turns out that part wasn’t in his book at all, and he was probably kind of annoyed that the screenwriters took it in this different direction.
(I don’t actually know if they DID take it in a different direction. I’ll have to read the book one day and find out.)
I don’t know how closely the film High Fidelity stuck to Hornby’s novel, but I do know that I didn’t like the *plot* of the film at all. Just the characters, the funny record-shop scenes. The plot was another dose of depressing infidelities and failures to communicate, with an abortion thrown in to make the failure to communicate all the sadder. (As in, it might have been a good idea for the girlfriend to *communicate* to John Cusack’s character that she was pregnant in the first place.)
Oh dear, he’ll never come for pizza now.
On April 18, 2009 at 10:16 am
scott says:
I did also read How to Be Good, but I believe the one you didn’t care for was A Long Way Down.
On April 18, 2009 at 11:05 am
MelanieB says:
I’ve read a couple of Hornby’s novels and I have to say How to Be Good was my least favorite. I hated it at first, was angry because I wanted to like it. Then second thoughts somehow led me to think it had some redeeming value but I forget what that was now.
On April 18, 2009 at 11:14 am
Lydia says:
It’s crazy (and yet so predictable) when books lead to other books isn’t it! 🙂 The list will never be finished. I mean, in a way, thank goodness, but also in a way, crossing things off seems to just propagate more entries.
On April 18, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Jessica Snell says:
Can I be a fly on the wall for your pizza dinner? Wil Wheaton, Nick Hornby and Steve in the same room!
I thought How To Be Good started extremely well – it had the guts to ask all the right questions – but then it felt like he chickened out at the end, and wouldn’t admit where the character’s quest for goodness would actually lead. Which would be, of course, Jesus. I think where it started to go really wrong was when he brought in a wussy, rather than a robust, clergyperson.
But it’s been a long time since I read it.
On April 19, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Eileen Smithdeal says:
LIssa- Im’m going to check some of Hornby’s books out of the library. Thanks for adding to my TBR pile:)
On April 19, 2009 at 8:10 pm