I have always tried to make time to read a new Nick Hornby book, and I generally read them with a lot of goodwill and fondness in my heart. The goodwill is entirely irrational, based as it is on the fact that he, like me, is an Arsenal fan, and is therefore surely a sign that he is a good egg and deserving of all good things that would come to him. His unambiguous moral superiority, based on the fact that he supports the same team as me, means that I read his books wishing and hoping that each new tome will be better than the last, and that I will enjoy the book even more than I enjoyed Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, or About a Boy.
After finishing the book, which is effectively a treatise on the nature of fandom, I seriously pondered my (misplaced?) allegiances to him, and the reasons behind why I wanted his books to be brilliant. Like Duncan, a character who's relationship with the works of a once-famous rock star is bordering on obsessive, Hornby's early work struck a chord with me - in the case of Fever Pitch an almost primal chord, and as a result I greedily read and re-read everything he subsequently published. I found a reflection of myself in many of the characters he wrote about, and as such learned a bit more about myself: sometimes an unflattering lesson, but one that I was glad of as a nervous teen/20 year old. Does the fact that I did not enjoy the book quite as much as his previous books say more about Hornby's direction as a writer, or about my own changes in taste? Or does it in fact reveal more about my snobby "fan" character that is satirised so well here?
The book revolves around a long-dormant rock star, Tucker Crowe, who achieved a reasonable amount of success in the mid-eighties before giving up that life in mysterious circumstances. In the intervening years he has developed a cult following, helped along by Internet obsessives and his media silence. The release of the demo tapes of his most successful album provides the catalyst for one of these obsessives, Duncan, to split up with his long term partner, Annie after they disagree about the genius (or lack thereof) of the new album. This also brings Tucker into their lives, after he contacts Annie after she posts a review of the album online.
It was a fine book, and on some level I did enjoy reading it (as evidenced by the fact that it only took me 3 days to finish it), but it didn't grab me as much as it should have done. The observations on men and women and their relationships to culture were, as ever, spot on, especially their relationship with that culture in relation to the Internet. However, the characters never felt real to me, and although their intellectual lives were well rounded, their actual lives were nothing more than sketches. In "High Fidelity", I really wanted Rob and Laura to get back together, and I felt like I knew them: this is not the case here, and although I enjoyed the book, there was no one person that I could identify with, and so I wasn't bothered about how it ended.
In the end then, a disappointment: but only in the way that you wish that your once favorite band would release something quite as good as their debut. The new stuff is still enjoyable, and has touches of what you really liked about them in the first place, but the familiar refrains seem tired and overdone.
No comments:
Post a Comment