In the window says'-doesn't have big enough ears Soul, and R&B, a bit of ska, some indie stuff, some sixties pop-everythingįor the serious record collector, as the ironically old-fashioned writing University dropout whose Championship Vinyl deals 'punk, blues, Hornby's stalking-horse, Rob Fleming-a bright-not-brilliant Isn't, it shortchanges rock and roll and the adults who love it. Usually a little better than that, however. Relief to go back to being boys again.' I think the novel is It, most observers have taken the novel for a second exploration ofĪdolescent obsession run amok, and Frith astutely sees this themeĪs ominous: 'After a decade of being New Men, striving forĮmotional and sartorial subtlety, it was a great middle-class Would cancel his mother's funeral if his team's schedule demanded Understandably after Fever Pitch, the memoir of a grown man who But the other is a critique of male fandom that'sĪt the heart of the novel's truth, failure, and intrinsic appeal,Īnd it should matter to anyone who cares about rock and roll. Writing, the male confession,' is moot-outsiders are foreverĭemanding that 'rock writing' (as the world calls rock criticism)īe something else, and at worst Hornby provides an excuse for them That it's 'taken to be the expression of a new sort of rock In the wake of 1992's Fever Pitch, by all accounts the finestīook ever written about what the world calls football, Hornby is aīig enough deal in England to have antagonists, and Simon Frith hasĪlready leveled two charges at his novel in these pages. True enough, I decided-but not as true as it And so, even as I was carriedĪlong on the novel's candor and verisimilitude, I kept asking how Robinson and the Miracles' Greatest Hits, but I doubt he's so vainĪs to believe it's that good.

Was flattered by the guy who compared High Fidelity to Smokey Reviewers who know less about music than Hornby does I'm sure he You might imagine, such comparisons come all too readily to Good album by, oh, a smarter Tom Petty, or a catchier Joan Jett. Substantial yet effortless read, as skillful and stimulating as a Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, a first novel about the life, loves,Īnd lists of a 35-year-old London record-shop proprietor, is a Robert Christgau: Boys Will Be Men: Nick Hornby's 'High Fidelity'

High fidelity nick