High Fidelity

There is a 90% chance I am getting made redundant in the next week. How am I feeling? On a scale of one to rubbish, I feel Reading High Fidelity For The First Time Since I Was Sixteen And Had Just Broken Up With A Boy.

Didn't even like the job much. Just don't like the uncertainty. Quite like Nick Hornby, though. For medicinal reasons.

*****

Look out below - apparently Goodreads is my blog today. Caveat lector.

If it matters to anyone, particularly (aside from me, obviously) - I kept my job. The office is like a wasteland and I've taken Monday off. The oddest thing. One of the solicitors said - and I agree with him - that it's better to experience this earlier in your careers. Then you won't be wrong-footed later.

For me, High Fidelity is quite a personal book. Now that I've read it twice, I can see that both times I've been in periods of emotional flux, on the edge of something good (well, I hope so this time anyway) and leaving behind a thing that was beginning to push me in a direction I didn't want to go in. This is interesting to me, because Rob, the main character, is quite obviously meant to be identified with, and I find myself very much apart from him.

I'm ambitious. I've always been ambitious. Rob isn't. Rob, mid-thirties, quietly renting videos and losing touch with friends he barely connected with in the first place, forever keeping his options open and wondering where everyone else is going, he's so very different from what I am and what I want to be. And yet, I think the cautionary tale is good for me.

When I was sixteen and read this, it was cathartic. This time, almost eight years later (oh god where did they go), I can see how dark it is, how bleak and unhealthy Rob's outlook is - he feels more like the sixteen year old I was, and less like the twenty four year old I am. And this time, I found a problem that I didn't have last time around. I didn't like the ending. I wasn't rooting for Rob and Laura. I was rooting for him to get himself together and pull himself out of the hole he'd got himself in. I object, strongly, to his being saved from himself by his girlfriend - mainly because I have felt pressure before to be that girlfriend, and I was crap at it, and it was no fun, and at any rate it wasn't my job. It was good for neither of us and, let's face it, the moment one partner in a relationship has to elbow and shove and trick the other into doing things, nobody's happy and you both know you're in trouble. Fictional Laura: get out and stay out, it's better for both of you. Here endeth the biographical details.

What surprised me, because I didn't know it first time around, is that this is Nick Hornby's first book. Did you know that? It's remarkably self-assured, well put together, practised. I wonder how many stories he's got hanging around in drawers at home. At any rate, it is an interesting beginning point to build on, and it puts a bit of a different spin on other books of his that I have known and loved: About a Boy, How to be Good. First time around, I saw pop culture references. This time I see his characters hiding behind them, the gaps they can't quite fill, the dimensions that endless references and guzzlings of other people's stories can't quite provide. I'm tempted to read some of Hornby's other works again, because this is a new slant on them and I would like to see how I read them differently this time.

And while I'm still writing this review, an honourable mention for how one night stands work, how being a grown-up and realising you have to pay council tax now, how they work. How rose-tinted remembrances of your friends when you were fifteen work.

I have a difficult decision to make over the coming weeks. I've been saying for months that I need to go on and do new things, that I'm not particularly happy with my day-to-day, that even the stability isn't really worth it any more. I'm glad I read this book, because I know what I need to do, and really it's now just a case of deciding how much of a wuss I really want to be.

I still don't know why I rated High Fidelity 5 stars. Most of these books don't stand a chance against an early Agatha Christie or a modern cozy, or a book by Dawkins... but I put all of them on the same level.

I'm going to watch the movie first time later this day. Most books that have first person view make it hell for me to get into. Not here. Reading this book was like meeting an old friend.

I don't know what Nick Hornby has gone through to piece together this ode. It feels real. It's real art. It's one of the best books I've read, ever. I am far, far from being the neurotic Rob, but this bitter ending upset me in a good way. I recommend this. By the way, I too like the Beatles a lot.

I can't believe I haven't listed this or anything yet.

O Jesus...I don't even have time now...

***

Ok, ok, Top Five Reasons that I'm going to review this book now:

* I can't let Steve down

* This is the basis for one of the best movies of its era, a movie that pretty much everybody I've ever been friends with has seen a hundred times and can quote at will...pretty much the definition of a popular classic in anyone's book.

* The book isn't necessarily better than the movie (only shallow people don't judge by appearances) but it did set the blueprint for the whole John Cusak thespian tour-de-force that was a Reagan Baby's wonderland...Cue the boombox and earnest gaze, cue the little kid on the bike indignantly shouting WHERE'S MY TWO DOLLARS!?...

Suffice to say, I think many 25-30 year olds these days can see a lot of themselves in our amiable, unambitious Rob, and I don't even think that's necessarily a bad thing.

* It's got the perfect set up- a guy who doesn't have very much else going on in his life but his record store, the records he fills it with, his girlfriend and his goony but lovable co-worker/friends...he's a slacker, certainly, but what's so great about the rat race anyway, and he's perceptive, witty, good hearted, sensitive, and let's face it- who wouldn't want to organize his life around sitting around and listening to music?

* Music is one of the best things in life- it's always there when you need it, it's entertaining and thought-provoking, it makes you want to dance or it makes you relax and it almost always takes you someplace else...it IS the greatest of the art forms, says I, whether it's thrown down by Beethoven or Charles Mingus or Nick Drake or The Ramones...except Taylor Swift, for this reason and this reason only:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSKXmV...


So let us also give the book the credit, it definitely knew its character and its milieu. I mean, this is pretty much the vox populi of a certain generation. It's not mine, not quite, "Rob" is actually a little older than I am, I think, and that makes a difference because for a fellow who pretty much defines himself by and through his musical tastes his range of references and preferences are a little different than my own cultural coordinates.

But this matters very little, since the point is essentially the same- music's his thing, and he's gonna go out of his way to listen to Yoko Ono, 60's soul, Johnny Cash bootlegs, The Small Faces and what-you-will all damn day...and that's a guy after mine own heart.

The interesting thing is, Rob's really more of an old-school aesthete. He's a dandy-meets-boyo, if you will. He pisses off to the pubs like a normal hip English dude in his early thirties but he's got real well-thought-out opinions on what is the best non-Rumors Fleetwood Mac record, or the more interesting lesser efforts of Stevie Wonder, has his favorite Pink Floyd B-side, maybe spends an afternoon in a debate between the relative merits of The Buzzcocks vs. Stiff Little Fingers or whether or not R.E.M's best record is from the 80's or 90's...

He's a professional appreciator! A connoisseur, naturally, and who doesn't love a guy with great taste? Who you gonna by your records from? C'mon! Why should he have to get a regular job and stop sleeping past noon and start tucking his shirt in and listen to music in the car on the way to work than have it garland his place of business all day?

Well, the truth is, he's got a girlfriend who wants to grow up with him and she's just left him flat. Well, what's a fellow to do?

I mean, one of the things that became clear to me years after reading this book...and I'm gonna go ahead and cop to it, after all I have pretty much BEEN that guy for the past oh, I dunno, decade of my life (I mean, I regularly ask people what their favorite Beatles record is during smoke breaks at work, just friends I mean, I'm not crazy, I tell you, I'm not!)...is that, in some ways, he's pretty much using his love for art and beauty as a kind of shield from the world, an excuse, a wall, a tent, a cocoon. He's not addressing the harder truths of his life and he's not willing to take a dive away from what he can consume judiciously, safely, from the sidelines.

He is, in his own way, a Kierkegaard hero. He's not quite as solitary or grim as the Melancholy Dane but he's definitely young and smart enough not want to sell out but also down-at-heel and inert enough to need to take a 'next step'.

Marriage is (as Kierkegaard, the eternal bachelor, would have it) a potential quantum leap from his own solipsistic inner world of aesthetic bliss. It's the ultimate growing-up gesture, one that forces him away from the shiny vinyl and the obscure 45's of Skip James and Duke Ellington and into actively participating in the life of another human being. Plus, there's the whole fatherhood thing...

He's kind of a perfect example of what an all-too-accurate Newsweek article unfortunately once referred to as "The Beta Male"...you know, the guy who went to college but doesn't have a real job, wears different band's shirts all the time and knows everything about the X-Files? The guy who has plenty of talent and potential but who lives in such a way as to only bring these qualities up to surface enough for others to expect more...

I would say a geek, and geek he is, but also a charming, intelligent and sensitive chap who just doesn't feel like joining the grind. Distinctions, however fine or based on taste, must be made.

The other part of it, at least to me, is that he's sort of stuck where he is and music is not only his escape but also his hidden talent. He doesn't play an instrument but he makes a pretty killer mixtape, so at least he seems to know what goes into one. It's what makes him unique, it's his mode of self-expression. What's broke, baby? Why you gotta fix it?

Hornby's not a writer I've spent much time with but from this and his really superb story, entitled "NippleJesus" (seriously, pick it up, you're gonna love it) I can definitely give him a solid nod for accuracy of characterization.

I've known several people- males, I've got to admit- who have stated explicitly for the record that the things Rob mentions about how he gets women are things that have worked for them, basically an attitude or a style that can be summed up in one neat aphorism: "I don't attract women because of the shadows I have, I attract women because of the shadows I don't have." Boom.

Just like that- he's not some jerk who combs his hair back and sucks his cheeks in trying to look like James Dean, he's more apt to make people feel comfortable and open and actually appreciated- plus, a little aesthetic enthusiasm doesn't hurt, either...I mean, passion is passion, and how many people really have it?

See, I think that's part of it. I do believe that you can grow and evolve as a person the more books you read and the more movies you watch and the more music you listen to...

I mean, it's human nature to adjust and be enriched by all that you take in, the experiences that you have even if you never leave your quiet suburban town or whatever. As the narrator in an otherwise forgettable Walker Percy novel once put it, you listen to Beethoven and drink some scotch and you'll let ten years go by and not even notice. Or, as I've once heard about a character in Wuthering Heights, one can read so much that the books pile up to the point when they blot out the window.

But here's the rub, which is not exactly where I think Hornsby wanted to go with this, but still- Rob is just fundamentally not in the situation or circumstances that he's best suited for. He's not in his element- not quite- despite the fact that he's missing some steps on the Maslow scale he is, in pretty limited but sufficient way, happy. He's got his music.

I think this is why, ultimately, the novel is a good one. It really doesn't set its narrative or dramatic sights too high. We get a character who represents a certain point in most of our lives and how we deal with it and where we go with it is sort of a story for another time, or at least another book.

It's interesting, comparing the character in the book to the John Cusak interpretation of him. In the book I'd say he's less misanthropic and more withdrawn. Less of a sarcastic, lazy snob and more of a decent bloke you'd easily go drinking with, the better to geek out and compare notes on the various pop culture ephemera which, let's face it, comprises quite a bit more of our lives than we might like to think. In the movie you get the humanity but you also get the sense that the character's a little more self-centered and solipsistic than meets the eye.

I can forgive him this, though, and here's (basically) why:

Your record collection (or whatever it is you collect, for that matter) is a scrapbook of your life. Susan Sontag said her library was an archive of longings, I'd say it's that certainly but it's more like an archive of time, of memory.

You tend to remember where you were and what you were doing when you read or saw or heard "X" and having that is half the fun. I'm not exclusively talking about location but also more in terms of life experiences and your own mental and emotional history. You can share that, you're good. The recently departed Roger Ebert (RIP!) once said that you should not marry anyone who doesn't love the movies that you love. Sooner or later, quoth the happily married Ebert, that person will not love you. Huh.

I think that's sort of one of the things that annoyed me a little about the plot of both the book and the movie. Rob's girlfriend (I believe her name was 'Claire'?) seemed a little less interesting because she was less, shall we say, interested than he was. She seemed to treat his obsession with his records as a kind of amiable past time, over in the corner playing with his toys, if you will. As any geek will readily attest, this is only part of the problem.

She's not a harpy or anything but it would have been interesting to see her divulge more of her tastes and opinions. Hornsby doesn't make her a caricature, he's fair to her, it's just that since we spend so much time with Rob and his pocked copy of Abbey Road it would be interesting to get more of her inner library.

The girlfriend character in the film was a little under-developed in this way, too, as I recall. Although there's just something awesome in the way she says "I knew there was a reason I wore a skirt today" when she's in the car with Rob after her father's funeral...Not trying to be pervy here, if you remember the moment, you know what I mean...

So yeah, in the end our hero comes the long way round to become a man in full.

Does he put aside childish things? Maybe.

But maybe he just stops using them in a childlike way....

Без оцінки.

У 2024 році вирішив так: якщо книга зразу йде не цікаво, тупенько, повільно - одразу відкладати. Але ця формула дала збій, і я таки дочитував/домучував цю книну. (Краще б читав Дім солі, який я знаю читатиметься важко). Враження не пишу, щоб не впливати на думку. Читайте анотацію, а ще краще усю книгу, щоб зрозуміти чи воно вам треба. Єдине що напишу: ясно що Гг і його історія вигадана, але от я паралельно читаю ще про одно уже реального чувака - так це різниця гігантська, і тут і там жарти, серйозні речі. Але цю я заставляв себе дочитати, бо не люблю закидати книги, а треба вже цю статистику змінити. Не йде, щось не подобається - бай-бай. Є ще фільм, можливо гляну, і буду чекати нетерпляче на інші українські відгуки, бо іноземці пишуть різне і оцінки також від 1 до 5.

Рекомендувати не буду, але ви прочитайте анотацію і вирішуйте :)

1/5 stars.

High Fidelity made me want to bash my head repeatedly against a brick wall. Or better still, bash Rob’s head repeatedly against a brick wall.

How can anyone feel anything good towards this sexist, narcissistic, self-pitying, pathetic arsehole? Rob is the worst type of man; yes, he’s relatable, in a sort of avoid-at-all-costs way. He has zero respect for any of the women in this book and blames them for so much of how his life has gone. He’s a cheater, he poaches other men’s girlfriends, he is disgusted by M&S knickers and thinks that women are ‘tricking him’ when they wear nicer pants for their first few dates. I could go on and on and on.

In the middle of the book, Rob was really miserable and I was quite enjoying it. Serves you right, I thought, maybe Hornby will give you what you deserve. But then. His ex-girlfriend decides to get back with him for absolutely no reason other than she’s ‘tired’? And proceeds to literally act as his mother. And that’s meant to be ‘the power of redemptive love’? Hornby romanticises women as carers for their boyfriends, which is absolutely not a healthy relationship. I’m mad.

And okay, I get Rob is meant to be unlikeable. Perhaps if he’d changed and understood how much of a dick he was I would have been on board, but he didn’t.

Why did I even read this book.

Rarely do I catch myself reading a book after I'd already seen the movie (mostly because I feel as if the movie TAKES something from the book while the book GIVES something to a movie, and thus the order should always be book first and movie second -- so that the book starts with the upper hand), but having enjoyed the movie so much I found myself craving more behind the story.

I wasn't disappointed. Biggest difference that I wasn't originally aware of was the location difference, which helped me ease into my decision to read the book because it was already so very different from the get-go. Many scenes between the two different forms of media are the same, if slightly shuffled, and I was very pleased to see that both have several unique scenarios that are have no parallel in its companion medium.

But enough about the comparisons between the book and the movie. I'll just say that they should be enjoyed together (though not at the same time) for a very satisfying overall experience.

Bottom line was that the book was highly enjoyable. It's always nice to read a quote or passage in a book that imparts some piece of wisdom you've never heard, but I personally think it's even more gratifying to read a quote or passage that perfectly puts into words some thought or feeling that you've had for years but have never been able to properly express for some reason. Hornby did this constantly throughout "High Fidelity."

Many of the experiences and emotions I've had as a young man (both as an individual entity and as part of a greater whole in relationships) I'd often found to be inexpressible despite my best efforts, so when I found myself reading such succinct expression of those up-to-that-point-nameless feelings, I found myself overjoyed that someone else gets it. And not just that someone gets it, but gets it probably better than I do. True EUREKA! moments throughout the whole book.

Guys should read it for the relief of knowing that they aren't alone in dealing with all this crap. And women should read it with an open mind and a sincere desire to get us and I guarantee they'll walk away much wiser than if they'd read all those "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" stinkers.

DNF at page 75

I just don’t like the protagonist. He’s whiny and kind of a dick. I don’t see where the plot is going and don’t really care either. I don’t really get any of the references and I don’t know enough about the music and bands he refers to for it to mean anything to me.
I could probably make myself finish as I don’t actively hate the book - I just don’t think I’m the right audience and life is too short.
Time to call it a day.

Unlikable characters can be great, but when the character is the misogynistic, childish, self-pitying, elitist and egocentric kind of unlikeable with absolutely zero character development... that's just too much.

Let me summarise this for you: middle-aged dude gets dumped by his girlfriend for treating her like shit, and instead of moving on like a mature person, he spends the entirety of the novel blaming each and every one of his exes for his crappy life and stalking them. He also feels entitled to determine what Good Music™ is, and he enjoys making fun of people with different taste with his two pals (no wonder why his music shop is not doing well). Oh, and let's not forget that gratuitous biphobic comment in which he basically implies bisexual people are perverts that can give you STDs and compares them to drug-addicts. In the end, he somehow gets back with his girlfriend and is somewhat successful, despite not having learned anything in 245 pages and being the same piece of crap he was at the beginning of the story. The end!