Hornbyfest 2011
March 3rd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Weirdly, I just now learned, by way of that picture, that the same people were involved in Grosse Pointe Blank. I love that movie, too!
Today, right now, at this very moment, I am setting in motion a new project: I am going to begin blogging regularly about books. Before I begin in on this first bit, allow me to say a quick word about why public posts have been absent for the last few months.
- Writing about politics is hard.
It’s true. Sure, there is a lot going on, and I certainly have opinions, but when I step up to the plate and stretch my fingers out to begin tip-tapping some of them, I can’t ever seem to get a hit. There are so many people who are much more informed and well-qualified expressing their opinions on much more influential soap-boxes that it makes me feel rather small. Which brings me to my next point.
- The West Wing is intimidating.
Well, it is! I’ve been marathoning through the series (the Sorkin seasons anyway) for the 2nd time in 3 months, and when one’s ideological idol is on screen every episode waxing poetic in beautiful Sorkin-verse (and he is played by Rob Lowe), that’s a tough act to follow. I end up feeling like all I could be capable of doing is cribbing the things Sam Seaborn says. I know this appears as though it’s a ludicrous problem, but think this to yourself: how often do you finish reading a poem or story and sit down to write, only to stop yourself after every line wondering if the reader is going to think you’re blatantly ripping off the words that inspired you?
- I don’t engage on a regular basis with anyone in person.
When I was working and/or at University, there were people with whom I could have the great debate. This is not in any way meant to imply those with whom I spend my time here are not intellectual dynamos themselves. Quite the opposite, in fact; I spend my time with a bright young teacher, an accomplished and hilarious actor, the best conversationalist on the planet and a geotechnical consultant. Not to mention my family loved ones, the outside the box writer/philosopher and the mental health technician. However, they are normal people, not insane nutjobs like me when it comes to this sort of thing, and, regardless of their political affiliations, they are not prone to insane ranting like myself. Without someone frantically and in raised voices arguing with me, it seems as though my blade has dulled…that, or I’ve simply mellowed.
No, I haven’t mellowed, because I got so mad at this video below that I turned beet-red and began to shake enough so that I couldn’t type well for a minute.
Now, someone who was being cheeky could point out that me that I have written a bit about politics just now and to that someone I would say, “Yes. Shut up.” Rest assured, heavier/meatier stuff is still up swimming around in my head, I just need to find the right spigot to make it spew forth.
On to books!
Over the last week and a half, I have read every Nick Hornby book I possess. I have a somewhat unique relationship with Mr. Hornby and his works, insomuch as I think they act as a gateway into my very soul. …Ok, perhaps that is a tad hyperbolic, but my point is: I can relate more closely to the situations, characters and feelings in Hornby’s books more than almost any other author I have ever read (except myself. har har. oh shut up Ian).
What draws me to him and connects me so closely to his books is the constant current that runs through all of them: obsession. In the following list, I break down for you the most basic thesis. I like this literature breakdown stuff, so I’m just giving you the off-the-top bits:
- High Fidelity – Popular Culture
- About A Boy – Selfishness
- How To Be Good - Selflessness
- A Long Way Down – Death
- Slam – This, being primarily written as a young adult novel, is a bit of an exception. Although I would argue there’s a theme of ‘fear of growing up’ thrown in.
- Juliet, Naked – Expertise and obsession itself
I won’t go so far as to do the same breakdown to his non-fiction works, despite Fever Pitch being probably the best non-fiction book ever written ever ever. To assign the same sort of metric to his non-fiction would be to deign to apply a thesis to his own life–and who the hell am I but some kid in Iowa he sent some e-mails to?
The persistent themes about obsession speak to me in many ways, largely because I am one of the obessessed. Throughout my life, my tendency to passionately latch on to the newest interest to cross my mind has been a source of criticism and, occasionally, astonishment. Those of us who have a tendency to obsesses do so, I think, out of a sense of mind craziness. That is to say that my mind is never really fit to settle on something. More than just that sense of playing Boggle with everything I see is a deeper motivation: I like knowing everything.
And that brings me back to Hornby’s books. If you take one step beyond the themes of obsession, you find characters who are out of their depth when they have less knowledge than someone else, which in turn means they have less control. The protagonist of High Fidelity–a fella named Rob–stumbles through life guided by chord changes and his encyclopedic musical mind. People are reduced to the sum total of their record collections and interpersonal relationships consist of mix tapes and a chronology of records. When Rob goes on his quest to find out why his past relationships soured, what he finds is that a person cannot simply be what comes out through their headphones.
That knowledge and revelation permeates straight through the page and into the lives of those of us who are afflicted with obsessions. We search out those who can tell us the model number of the spaceships in Star Wars, or those who can rattle off line after line of our favourite films. Or, on the other side of the coin, we reject those who can do so as well as us, for fear that another person with the same knowledge may in fact learn about us what we learned about ourselves through that obsession.
It’s ironic to say this in a post talking about something I love, I know; the things in our lives over which we obsess speak volumes about us, to be sure. But Hornby’s novels show us that the things and ideas upon which we ruminate for hours on end are a byproduct of our own head, and that the effect of peering out from behind the obsession-curtain can yield wonderful results.
