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Biography & Autobiography. Sports & Recreations. Nonfiction. HTML:A brilliant memoir from the beloved, bestselling author of Funny Girl, High Fidelity and About A Boy. In America, it is soccer. But in Great Britain, it is the real football. No pads, no prayers, no prisoners. And that's before the players even take the field. Nick Hornby has been a football fan since the moment he was conceived. Call it predestiny. Or call it preschool. Fever Pitch is his tribute to a lifelong obsession. Part autobiography, part comedy, part incisive analysis of insanity, Hornby's award-winning memoir captures the fever pitch of fandom�its agony and ecstasy, its community, its defining role in thousands of young men's coming-of-age stories. Fever Pitch is one for the home team. But above all, it is one for everyone who knows what it really means to have a losing season. From the Trade Paperback edition..… (more)
User reviews
I do have to say though that despite its awesomeness the
Still, Fever Pitch remains one of the most thoughtful books written about any sport. The phenomenon of obsessive, lifelong adherence to an English football club (in Hornby’s case, Arsenal) is vastly different to the US experience of following a football or baseball team. In the US, people go to sports events for pleasure, to have a good time, often with their families. In Britain, attendance at soccer matches is a predominantly male thing, a matter of serious, intense identification with the team, not pleasure in the game.
Hornby explores this intensity with real knowledge borne of personal experience. It is wholly irrational, but…. as he dryly observes, young men develop obsessions while young women develop personalities. He also argues, interestingly, that the boredom, disappointment and anticlimax accompanying regular football watching are a focus, an outlet for the depressive feelings that are part and parcel of dull, southern English suburban life. It’s not only extrovert feelings that need expression!
One wonders how Hornby will update some aspects of his story. For most of it, Arsenal are a team with more potential than achievement, and even their real success in the early 90s looks like being short-lived. Hornby still sees Arsenal as the team everyone loves to hate.
So what does he say now that Arsenal have risen to the level, in several successive years, of glamorous European superstars? The team everyone loves to hate? Arsenal?
Love them!
For those Tull fanatics, substitute albums, group members, concerts, pre- and
Hornby writes with such wit, such self deprecating humor, and yet, with an insight that leaves an impact. Fever Pitch provided a quick and enjoyable read. Highly recommended.
Hornby's always a good read, this one was dampened by my utter lack of knowledge of the English soccer realm. Entertaining none the less.
[Be advised: the Barrymore/Fallon movie "based" on this book bears little to no resemblance to it. The only similarity is that
Even though this book has been adapted into two different movies that make it out as a love triangle among man, woman, and the sport he's obsessed with, this book is not a novel. It's a memoir about soccer in the same way that Rocky is about boxing or Jaws is about a shark. Hornby uses memories of his beloved Gunners matches as a launching point to tell stories of his life, his obsession, and worldview. He also examines English culture and sporting life as it changes over the course of his life. A funny and insightful memoirs, this book is NOT just for sports' fans.
I like Hornby's writing, mostly,
Also, there's honestly not enough of Nick Hornby himself in the book. He talks about how as a child, going to soccer matches gave him a means to communicate with his dad after his parents' divorce. These sections are good. Later, as an adult, he mentions suffering from years-long depression and having failed relationships, but there's not much made of those things. It's hard to get a handle on what was really going on - and saying that his depression was magically cured by Arsenal's winning season is either flippant or disingenuous. We don't have any way to tell which, because while he makes relatively frequent mention of the depression, we don't really find out much beyond that.
Overall, not a particularly strong Hornby book, but it was an early one (published in 1992), so I guess that's to be expected.
A quote:
"They offered me a drink and I declined, so they shook my hand and offered commiserations and I disappeared; to them, it really was only a game, and it probably did me good to spend time with people who behaved for all the world as if football were a diverting entertainment, like rugby or golf or cricket. It's not like that at all, of course, but just for an afternoon it was interesting and instructive to meet people who believed that it was."
Hornby eventually became a hardcore Arsenal supporter and this book covers the impact his sporting obsession has on his life.
As a
As a diehard Hornby fan, I found this a worthwhile read, though it's a very different work from his better known works of fiction.
But unfortunately, I'm not British, and I haven't spent much time at all in England to understand the British affect or culture. I found myself constantly consulting Wikipedia to find out what the heck Hornby was talking about (analogizing two clashing worlds by referencing two apparently very different British soap operas, for instance), and while I think it certainly taught me something about Britain as a result, I didn't really go into the book hoping for that. Further, I think I may have tried reading this too early in my budding football hobby, as I don't understand football tactics nearly enough to really get at Hornby's point from time to time.
It was refreshing to read that there are people far worse off than I am when it comes to being a fan of a sport or team. While I have a lifelong passion for the Chicago Cubs, and I can certainly recall vividly some of their worst defeats (and I imagine I'd recall triumphs as well, if there were any to contemplate...sigh), I'm not nearly at the level where I can recollect the score of multiple games, let alone who drove in or scored the runs to begin with.
All in all, a pretty good book, and quite funny at times. I only wish I understood the British and football better.