Nick Hornby

M a j o r   B o o k s

Fever Pitch
High Fidelity
About a Boy
How to be Good
A Long Way Down

:: Martin Collis

Nick Hornby could be the patron saint of self-deprecation. Even today when he sells warehouses full of books and everything he touches seems to be successful he still thinks of himself as "a glass half-empty bloke". He describes his working day as "I have an office round the corner from my home. I arrive there between 9:30 and 10 a.m., smoke a lot, write in horrible little two-and-three sentence bursts, with five-minute breaks in between. Check for emails during each break, and get irritated if there aren't any. Go home for lunch. If I'm picking up my son I leave at 3:30. If not, I stay till six. It's all pretty grim! And so dull!" His son Danny is autistic and was born in 1992 just when it seemed that Nick was emerging from the wilderness of his young adult years. In Nick's words, "I graduated from college in 1979 and by 1989 I had achieved nothing whatsoever." He failed as a musician, teacher, screenwriter and boyfriend, and though he didn't actually fail at pumping gas he did it rather a long time for a Cambridge graduate. To use Nick's description, "Half my adult life was a total fuck-up." [Click Nick's photo on the right to open a separate window and listen to him introduce and read from "How to be Good"—note: mp3, 7.5MB]

If I could ask one celebrity to dinner it would be Nick Hornby; like me he's bilingual and can speak fluent football and music, he knows soccer in the same visceral way I do, he thinks pop music really, really matters and he's a wonderful observer of human frailties and strengths. Simon Hattenstone of the Guardian newspaper summarized Nick nicely in the introduction to an interview.

For a supposedly feelgood author, Nick Hornby's books aren't half miserable. Take Fever Pitch, his breakthrough memoir. As much as it is about football, it is about a man coping with depression, under-achieving and not belonging. Or High Fidelity, his first novel. Yes, it's the story of a music-obsessed geek, but it's also the story of an emotional illiterate who can't make head nor tail of life. Then there's About A Boy, which features a subplot about a mother trying not to commit suicide, and How To Be Good, which portrays a middle-aged couple striving unsuccessfully to find hope in their relationship.

The thing about all these books is that they are funny and warm and cute, and you don't have to mention the word depression when talking about them. Not so his latest. A Long Way Down is also comic, but there is no masking the subject here. This is depression in spades, or so you'd think. The novel has four narrators, all of them planning to kill themselves on New Year's Eve by jumping off the roof of a high-rise block in north London known as Toppers' House.

M o v i e s

Hornby's books are so visual and well observed that it seems inevitable that they all become movies. "Fever Pitch" starring Colin Firth was a gem about an intelligent man dealing with his passion for football (or maybe not dealing with it).

The book emerged from Nick's Monday sessions with a therapist in the late 80s, who would ask him about his weekend. He realized that the only thing that really mattered each weekend was whether Arsenal won or lost, which seemed pathetic but totally unavoidable. At first his therapist thought it was an avoidance technique or a joke until she realized the massive role that Arsenal played in Nick's head and hormonal system.

Somewhat improbably "Fever Pitch" won't go away, and it has recently been remade in a US-centric version by the Farrelly Brothers with Boston Red Sox taking the place of Arsenal. The perennially unfortunate Red Sox triggered a hasty re-write of part of the script when they won the World Series last year, and two of the stars from the film, Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon, were seen celebrating at Fenway Park.

The next book and the next movie was "High Fidelity". This time the movie didn't do a Brit version first and just relocated the record store straight to Chicago. It didn't matter, it was wonderful. John Cusack as a Hornby-esque record geek nailed the part. The cast was dazzling; Jack Black was magnificent, Katherine Zeta Jones looked magnificent, I've always enjoyed Tim Robbins and Bruce Springsteen even has a cameo role. It's the Jack Black dialogue that still has space in my head.

Barry (Jack Black): We're no longer called Sonic Death Monkey. We're on the verge of becoming Kathleen Turner Overdrive.
Customer: Do you have the song, "I just called to say I love you?" It's for my daughter's birthday.
Barry: Yeah, we have it.
Customer: Well, can I buy it?
Barry: No, actually you can't.
Customer: Why not?
Barry: God. Do you even know your daughter? There's no way she likes that song!...Oops, is she in a coma?

A stage version of High Fidelity is now in the works. The writing team of Amanda Green and Tom Kitt are adapting the book for the Broadway stage as a musical. They recently premiered several of the songs in a concert at Birdland. One of the backers of this enterprise is Disney.

"About a Boy" starred Hugh Grant as a man who picks up single mothers by posing as a single parent himself with a borrowed son. It must be great for Nick Hornby, who is smallish, bald, smokes and approaching 50 to be able to create these autobiographical (I'm not suggesting Nick picked up single mums) characters and then have them portrayed by some of the sexiest men in movies.

The movie rights to Nick's next two novels, "How to be Good" and "A Long Way Down" have both been snapped up. Johnny Depp's production company bought "A Long Way Down" and Columbia pictures have acquired "How to be Good", and I can think of who I'd like to cast in the lead roles, specifically Helen Mirren as the 'good' doctor and Robin Williams as 'Good News', the guru. Nick donates all his income from movie rights and screenplays to Treehouse, which he co-founded in 1997 with other parents of severely autistic kids.

I think it's appropriate that Nick wrote "How to be Good" because I think he's figured it out and so does Zadie Smith, who wrote in a Time magazine article,

Hornby believes that beautiful songs, beautiful books and yes, the Beautiful Game (soccer in case you don't know) are the great forces. He loves good stuff so much that one might call him the European Ambassador of Goodness.