An Obsession Laid Bare

Just before I got ambushed by my IFFP 2012 longlist reading, I was actually going through my shelves and polishing off a few books which had been waiting patiently for a reading for a long, long time.  One of those was the most recent novel by an old favourite of mine, Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked.  So if he's such a favourite of mine, why did it take me so long to get around to reading the book?  Patience, dear friends - all will be revealed...

*****

The novel is mostly about Annie, a woman living in a dull seaside town in the north of England.  She has spent the best years of her life with her partner Duncan, an overgrown schoolboy who spends his free time on the Internet, chatting to like-minded folk about their shared obsession, reclusive American singer Tucker Crowe.  When a stripped-down acoustic version of Crowe's masterpiece album, Juliet, winds up in Duncan's inbox, he is overcome and publishes a piece expounding on its brilliance.  Annie, however, who knows a fair bit about Crowe herself, just thinks it's a classic case of the Emperor's new clothes...

As unlikely as it seems, this release, an album which soon receives the nickname Juliet, Naked, is the catalyst for the break-up of Annie and Duncan's moribund relationship.  Even more unlikely though is a further effect it has, for when Annie writes her response to Duncan's piece, she gets acknowledgement and agreement from a most unlikely source...

I'm happy to say that I enjoyed Juliet, Naked, which, given what I said in the introduction to this post, was only to be expected.  However, the truth is that Hornby is a writer for the reader I used to be, back in my late teens/early twenties, and I'm always a little concerned with how the current me will react to his books.  A while back, I reread Fever Pitch for the umpteenth time, and for the first time I felt that it really wasn't speaking to me as it used to.  That is almost certainly connected to the less significant role football now plays in my life, and knowing Fever Pitch as I do, I'm well aware of how ironic that loss of faith and apparent moving on sounds (Hornby does the same thing with football in the book!) - but still...

And it's true that Juliet, Naked isn't always up to scratch.  Coming at it after the heights of literary fiction is a bit of a bump, and there is none of the elegant, soothing prose you might find in the pages of other writers.  Annie is far from a complete character either, a little too prissy, correct and, above all, right.  Just as in High Fidelity, in Juliet, Naked the author has created an example of the typical Hornby couple: a useless, Peter-Pan type man, and a competent, sensible, better woman.  Duncan, gormless as he is, receives short shrift from his creator, and that's a shame as the book is actually more interesting when he's around.

The comic timing though is as impeccable as always, and there are numerous scenes which will elicit a smile (or a full-on belly laugh) from even the most curmudgeonly of readers.  The scenes with Annie and her shrink (a prim and proper elderly gentleman who only has one client) are among the highlights here, but some of Duncan's insanely stupid ideas (including a certain toilet stop) rival them.

For bloggers, of course, the character of Duncan is a particularly compelling one as he is an example of what might be if we get a little too carried away with all this reviewing nonsense.  His attempts to become an authority on something most people have moved on from long ago have eaten away at his personal life like a cancer, sabotaging his relationship and effectively stifling his career.  His efforts backfire when he attempts to be too clever with his review of Crowe's acoustic album, and...

...sorry.  I'm just realising the irony of some of my earlier pretentious comments...

Anyway, that's enough of this review - I have a family to get back to.  In summary, Hornby is not Proust, but he can be very funny and entertaining.  Is that really a bad thing?  I'll leave you to debate that amongst yourselves...

Review Post 31 - Feeding the Addiction

OK, so it's not the real trophy, but it's the best I could come up with at short notice...

*****

As a way of paying literary tribute to the event which has been seriously compromising my sleep over the past month, I thought it only fitting to revisit an old friend this week.  Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby's first book, is a work of non-fiction, which follows his life from his school days to (what once was) the present day.  The book differs widely from a standard autobiography though as it links the ups and downs in Hornby's life with those of his favourite football club, Arsenal, and along the way attempts to explain the hold football has on people and why it matters so much to so many.

While the first part of the book is full of youthful adventures and cheery anecdotes, the middle section is slightly darker and more serious.  Hornby traces the origins of his passion for the beautiful game to an attempt to find common ground with his father after his parents' divorce, but it later comes to support him in a period of his life where he can't seem to get going and where everything he does seems doomed to failure.  On further analysis though, the writer starts to wonder if football is a help or a hindrance: are Arsenal his only crutch in his darkest days, or a retardant preventing him from growing up properly?


The other major theme of the book is an attempt to explain what football means to the wider community and to explore who follows football and why.  While our allegiances may seem clear-cut, it's still worth wondering what exactly we're following.  Are we attached to the club?  Are we just obsessed by the players?  Or (as Hornby suspects in his case) is it the stadium, the secular shrine, which is the focus of attention?  With your relationship with your football team being compared to a marriage (but with no chance of divorce), it's probably best to know the answers to these questions...

I have read this book far too many times over the past fifteen years or so, which made the first section of the book slightly tedious (when you remember most of the anecdotes word for word, you start to lose interest after a while).  However, the writer's struggles to find a niche in life and his consequent use of Arsenal as a comfort blanket are still brutally honest and fascinating, and a lot more open than you would expect.

My circumstances have also changed, and it is this which makes my reading of the book so different this time.  When I first read it (probably in 1994), I was a football-mad university student with absolutely no vision for the future stretching beyond the next indoor 5-a-side game, and many of the events described in the book were still fresh in the memory.  Now it seems a little dated, and with sixteen years more life experience, and a greater exposure to the world outside English football, it all seems a little more distant from my life.  Which is a shame.

At the time the book came out, it was sold as a book everyone should read, a work which would help people to understand what's going on inside the brains of football fanatics.  In 2010, I'm not sure that the wider community would get as much out of it, especially if you're not British. Which is not to say that it's not worth reading (it most definitely is, and don't let my slightly reflective and nostalgic post fool you into thinking otherwise); it would just benefit from the addition of footnotes for the casual, international reader.

Eighteen years on from publication, some things have changed immensely.  Hornby is now a world-famous writer, of both novels and screenplays; his beloved Arsenal have moved out of Highbury, thus potentially destroying one of the reasons for his passion; and player salaries have rocketed to astronomical proportions.  In an early chapter, Hornby recalls a fan abusing a player, questioning how he could be earning a hundred pounds a week for such a shoddy performance.  The performances  (and the abuse) may not have changed much, but the salaries certainly have: try a hundred thousand pounds a week...

50 - 'The Complete Polysyllabic Spree' by Nick Hornby

Hurray! 50 Not Out! (I am now strolling around the room raising my non-existent cricket bat in salute to the equally non-existent crowd; I take this challenge very seriously...). Avoiding the rather obvious choice of 'War and Peace' to bring up the milestone (too cliched. And long.), I thought it would be fun to use the milestone to think about what I've learned this year by reading Nick Hornby's collection of magazine columns, 'The Complete Polysyllabic Spree', and finding out what old Nick feels about this reviewing lark.

You see, despite being touted as review columns, Hornby's pieces have just as much to do with him and the whole idea of reading, writing and reviewing as with talking about any particular book. Which was a blessing as, to tell you the truth (and I'm nothing if not truthful - O.K., slight fib), I didn't really love this book as much as I thought, or hoped, I would. One of the problems was that the columns were aimed at an American audience and dealt with a host of books which I'd never heard of and which didn't really sound that interesting. I know I can't expect authors to write books with me in mind (although I'm hopeful that Haruki Murakami will get back to me about the pitch I sent him involving cats, wells, loneliness and my local football team), but I struggled to stay interested in his brief descriptions of novels he picked up whilst on book tours in small-town USA.

Now the stuff about writing, that I could relate to. In the introduction, Hornby talks about the effect taking on a book review column had on his literary intake, noting that where before he would take time out between books and read newspapers and magazines instead, he now felt compelled to close one book and open the next in the same action (which is a very cool trick if you can pull it off. I tried it, but I just ended up with two books face down on the floor). In addition, because of the happy-happy joy-joy nature of the magazine, which prohibited any kind of slagging off of books (apparently there are already enough literary reviews which specialise in crushing writers' confidence), Hornby was encouraged to only read books he was 100% sure he'd love - if he hated them, he couldn't actually mention the name of the book, or the author, in his column...

Those of you with long memories, or an ability to spot hyperlinks, may recall that the reason I started this blog was linked to taking on the Fifty-Book Challenge, and one result of that challenge has been that I've been reading like mad all year. I now find it hard to imagine a stage of being between books, a sort of literary inter-regnum (inter-librum?); to misquote the Royal Family's announcement, "The book is dead. Long live the book!". The fact that I have a full-time job, a part-time Master's course, a hyper-active (but loveable) two-year-old daughter and a long-suffering wife (who now says the word 'blogging' with the contempt you'd usually bestow on infamous war criminals) has not managed to come between me and a good book. Or 50.

Another issue with writing is (and this may come as a big shock to some people) that other people out there in the vast space that is the world-wide interweb thingy actually take the time to read what you write. And then hate you for it. Just as Mr. Hornby has had to bite his tongue on the orders of the (wholly fictional) massed ranks of the Polysyllabic Spree, so too have I had to think twice about what I want to say in case I offend someone who happens to stumble across my blog. This is especially important because I am essentially a product of my culture and my upbringing, something which helps to style my reviews, and many of the people who read my amateurish waffle are not (actually, that covers pretty much everyone apart from my brother and sister). That is to say, it's incredibly easy to offend someone without even trying. And that really concerns me. I really would like to know when I'm offending someone; it makes life much easier.

Of course, the most worrying thought I had while reading 'The Spree' was that if Hornby, one of my favourite writers, was capable of losing me for good parts of his writing, how could I expect to hold the interest of anyone outside my immediate family (and some of them are already a lost cause)? Do other people really care about what I'm reading? If so, why? A while back I read Kafka's 'Der Prozess' (The Trial), and I spent hours on an elaborate parody of a Kafkaesque situation in lieu of a formal review. Having applied the final touches, I sat back and waited for the comments to roll in. Ten minutes later, I remembered to publish it and went away to do something more useful instead. A week later, crushed and licking my wounds, I got on with my life, having seen my most painstaking effort at a piece of writing ever simply ignored by the whole world. Six-and-a-half-billion people; not even my wife read it.

Naturally, now I realise that:
a) Only about 12 people know my blog exists.
b) Very few of those people will have read the book.
c) Why would anyone read a book review which tells the uninitiated absolutely nothing about the book, or the author, which can be deciphered without a specialised university course?
d) It probably wasn't anywhere near as good as I thought. Now, that really hurts.

So, yes, hurray for me, 50 not out and all that. However, as the imaginary crowd settles back into its collective seat, and I get ready to face the next book, I have to start thinking about the blog and my insatiable reading drive. Why am I really doing this? What is possessing me to spend as much of my spare time as humanly possible reading and then scribbling down my responses in blog form?

No, seriously, that was a real question...

16 - 'Slam' by Nick Hornby

Young Adult books. Quite apart from the ridiculous Americanised name for this genre (and the fact that it makes no sense; these are books for teenagers, and no teenager in the history of the earth has ever been anywhere near being an adult - at least, not the ones I've known), these books tend to be a bit childish and well, dull. So what happens when one of your favourite authors (well, contemporary ones anyway) decides to veer off into the realms of teenage angst, underage sex and skateboarding (not something you'd find in your average Tolstoy novel)?

'Slam' is Nick Hornby's foray into the world of teen literature, and it has many of the hallmark traits we've come to expect from his works. As usual, there are expert portrayals of pointless rows and sulking males (at least, Sam, being a teenager, has more of a right to sulk and be childish than most of Hornby's male leads) and deadpan sarcasm stopping self-righteous anger dead in its tracks. There's also a fair amount of internal monologue going off at tangents (a habit which, if you've read a few of my blog postings, you will notice that I seem to have picked up - I find it hard to finish a sentence without a pair of brackets containing a very tangential line of thought!). Oh yes, and he mentions Highbury and Arsenal: the usual ingredients are complete.

In other ways, however, there is a marked difference to his 'adult' novels (although not many of the characters in those novels are any more mature than Sam...); the style of writing seems a little more simplistic while the plot seems to move along in a more predictable, linear style. Of course, none of his other novels contain a magic poster of a skateboarding superstar which quotes passages from his autobiography and may, or may not, be transporting Sam into his future so that he can see how his life is going to pan out over the next few years. I reckon I would have liked one of those when I was a teenager...

Without wanting to give too much away, 'Slam' shows what happens when teenagers get slightly careless and how things can develop when you've passed the point of no return (no pun intended). By being granted glimpses of his future, Sam is given the courage to do the right thing, even if he'd much rather spend his days skating around the local park or selling ice-creams at the seaside (it makes more sense in the book). The book also leaves you thinking what the 'right' solution is: should Sam run off as his Dad did before, or stick it out as Alicia's (the mother of Sam's child's) parents did?

It all seems to work out nicely in the end (although Sam has to take everyone else's word for that) despite all the ups and downs of nappy changes and disastrous immunisation attempts. I'm not sure how many times I'll be reading this book over the years (the pop culture references designed to appeal to British teenagers may date rather embarrassingly very soon), but I do have one definite use for it; any child of mine who looks like they're going to have pre-marital sex will be forced to read this book until they're prepared to swear a vow of chastity for the rest of their time under the family roof. One look at the reality of teen parenthood as portrayed in this book will do more than a hundred school abstinence or safe sex lectures to keep legs crossed and minds on more wholesome activities.

Like skateboarding.

9 - 'How To Be Good' by Nick Hornby

It seems a large leap from 'Bleak House' to 'How To Be Good'; early-19th century versus very early-21st century London; a rant against corrupt institutions and a portrayal of the difficulties of everyday life; the best part of 1000 pages against just under 250. However, there are several similarities in the two books (apart from the fact that they are the last two books I've read, which is good - I'd have had trouble linking this book with 'Jane Eyre'!).

Firstly, and most obviously, both novels are set in London. Dickens is rightly considered the supreme portrayer of life in the great capital, but Hornby is also, in his own Arsenal-centric way, a chronicler of life in olde London towne, especially that part of it inhabited by guilty, liberal-minded middle-class types. Another similarity is the foregrounding of social injustice. Hornby's characters (well some of them...) attempt to change their slightly-privileged existence and start to do more for the less fortunate members of society, and, just as Mrs. Jellyby in 'Bleak House' does, inflict harm on their own family in doing so. In fact, this idea of charity starting at home (literally, and not for the benefit of those who live there) is very close to the ridiculous projects of Mrs. Jellyby and the rest of the well-meaning, but deluded, do-gooders of Dickens' imagination, but in Hornby's case (seen throught the eyes of Katie Carr, a doctor whose marriage is falling apart and whose husband has consequently attempted to change his life by becoming more forgiving and altruistic), we are unable to dismiss these do-gooders; we see that our cynicism is stopping us from doing what is right and helping those who are less fortunate.

The key to the book is the question: what does it mean to be good? Katie believes that her job as a doctor makes her automatically good; however, the more her husband tries to do real good, the more she sees that she needs to put herself before other people. This is also true for her children, who suffer (materially, at first, and later on emotionally) from the projects of their father and his new-age business partner. Despite deciding to make a go of the marriage, the effects of the efforts to be good bear little fruit, and the family is arguably in a worse-off position afterwards than they were before.

Katie is selfish, but, it could be argued, she has every right to be. Are the middle classes obliged, simply by having become relatively affluent and successful in life, to give away their riches because other people are worse off? When charity begins at home, should it stay there? How would your kids feel if you decided to give their computer to the homeless shelter?

'How To Be Good' is typical Hornby. There is sarcasm aplenty, a vivid insight into the pettiness and viciousness of domestic arguments (which, more than once, are likened to a kind of sport or game) and people asking awkward questions at socially inappropriate times. The idea of what it means to be good is something that must torture those of us who have a little more than we probably need, and Hornby catches the tortured ruminations of the London mortgage belt superbly. The only slight quibble I have with this book is that although the story is seen through the eyes of Katie (the first time that Hornby has used a female narrator), I'm not sure that it worked overly well; there may have been no real change to the book if the roles of Katie and David had been switched, and I'm not convinced that the author managed to capture the female mind. Certainly, there were definite shades of the central characters (all male) of his previous novels. Still, this is only a minor point, and not even Dickens got everything right!

The book has one more parallel with 'Bleak House'; the issues, whatever you may like to call them, have no resolution. Chancery is not reformed, and Katie's life is no better than it was before. Although she decides to stay at home and work on her life (including making more time for herself), you are tempted to think that it may all be in vain. When, at the end of the book, she looks out of the window and sees "nothing", you can't help but wonder if she made the right decision in staying with her husband after all.