three hours to wonder and three hours to fall
I'm going to surprise everyone and talk about a British man. [Who is not Thom Yorke, David Tennant, James Norrington, or any of the other blokes from the UK I've been blabbing about lately. See, I told you it was a surprise!]
So for some reason I hadn't read Nick Hornby's newest yet, but when I was in London in late May I picked up an Official British Copy of A Long Way Down.
And I've been reading other stuff lately, but last week I finally picked it up and have been devouring it on my hour-long lunches [oh, hour-long lunches, you are my heeero]. It's written from four POVs, and each character has such a brilliant narrative style, and it's odd and fucked-up and sad and hilarious, and oh so very Hornby.
The way Hornby writes about music makes me want to scream, "YES! OH MY GOD YES IT'S LIKE YOU ARE MY BRAIN!" One of the protagonists, JJ, has a quote early on about being in love with a band so much you want nothing more to live inside their amps until your brains fall out your ear. It made me stop breathing for a second because in one perfect sentence Hornby just summarized what I thought unsummarizable.
Okay, I found it:
"If you love rock 'n' roll, all of it, from, I don't know, Elvis right through James Brown and up to the White Stripes, then you'd have wanted to quit your job and come live inside our amps until your ears fell off. Those shows were my reason for living, and I now know that this is not a figure of speech."
I had to stop and just bask, after I first read that sentence.
And there've been other things that are superficially, perfectly brilliant, like a comment of Martin's: "Even though our problems had driven us up there, it was as if they had somehow, like Daleks, been unable to climb the stairs."
Or another comment of JJ's: "How do people, like, not curse? How is it possible? There are all these gaps in speech where you just have to put a 'fuck.' I'll tell you who the most admirable people in the world are: newscasters. If that was me, I'd be like, 'And the motherfuckers flew the fucking plane right into the Twin Towers.' How could you not, if you're a human being?" After I read that I didn't know whether to laugh or cringe, but either way it was just so true I couldn't think.
Hornby's writing is full of that; I think I could quote High Fidelity or About a Boy at you all day, and How To Be Good contains one of the best passages about love and pain I've ever read, but he always surprises me. Each time I come across perfect quote, I just want to carve it into my brain.
Two bigger passages, though, are still hitting me:
"I don't know you. The only thing I know about you is, you're reading this. I don't know here you're happy or not; I don't know whether you're young or not. I sort of hope you're young and sad. If you're old and happy, I can imagine that you'll maybe smile to yourself when you hear me going, He broke my heart. You'll remember someone who broke your heart, and you'll think to yourself, Oh, yes, I can remember how that feels. But you can't, you smug old git. Oh, you might remember feeling sort of pleasantly sad. You might remember listening to music and eating chocolates in your room, or walking along the Embankment on your own, wrapped up in a winter coat and feeling lonely and brave. But can you remember how with every mouthful of food it felt like you were biting into your own stomach? Can you remember the taste of red wine as it came back up and into the toilet bowl? Can you remember dreaming every night that you were still together, that he was talking to you gently and touching you, so that every morning when you woke up you had to go through it all over again? Can you remember carving his initials in your arm with a kitchen knife? Can you remember standing too close to the edge of an Underground platform? No? Well, fucking shut up, then. Stick your smile up your saggy old arse."
And my last quote, a passage I read today:
"I thought I couldn't go wrong with Nick Drake, especially in a room full of people who've got the blues. If you haven't heard him...man, it's like he boiled down all the melancholy in the world, all the bruises and all the fucked-up dreams you've let go, and poured the essence into a little tiny bottle and corked it up. And when he starts to play and sing, he takes the cork out, and you can smell it. You're pinned into your seat, as if it's a wall of noise, but it's not--it's still and quiet, and you don't want to breathe in case you frighten it away."
[Jess and Martin proceed to totally NOT GET it.]
"I wondered whether it would be possible to punch both of them out simultaneously, but rejected the idea on the grounds that it would all be over too quickly, and there wouldn't be enough pain involved. I'd want to keep on pummeling them after they were down, which would mean doing the one at a time. It's music rage, which is like road rage, only more righteous. When you get road rage, a tiny part of you knows you're being a jerk, but when you get music rage, you're carrying out the will of God, and God wants these people dead."
I haven't mentioned anything Maureen's said, though I love her and her pitiful sadness. Martin's great and Jess is hilariously [and not-so-hilariously] spot-on, but I think JJ is where Hornby speaks out from the most. It's all perfect and so true and I love it...and I'm almost 2/3 done.
Also, there's a DJ Goodnews shout-out, which is all sorts of awesome.
[This post brought to you by the How Long Can Eve Hold Out On Watching Army Of Ghosts And Doomsday? Fundation.
So for some reason I hadn't read Nick Hornby's newest yet, but when I was in London in late May I picked up an Official British Copy of A Long Way Down.
And I've been reading other stuff lately, but last week I finally picked it up and have been devouring it on my hour-long lunches [oh, hour-long lunches, you are my heeero]. It's written from four POVs, and each character has such a brilliant narrative style, and it's odd and fucked-up and sad and hilarious, and oh so very Hornby.
The way Hornby writes about music makes me want to scream, "YES! OH MY GOD YES IT'S LIKE YOU ARE MY BRAIN!" One of the protagonists, JJ, has a quote early on about being in love with a band so much you want nothing more to live inside their amps until your brains fall out your ear. It made me stop breathing for a second because in one perfect sentence Hornby just summarized what I thought unsummarizable.
Okay, I found it:
"If you love rock 'n' roll, all of it, from, I don't know, Elvis right through James Brown and up to the White Stripes, then you'd have wanted to quit your job and come live inside our amps until your ears fell off. Those shows were my reason for living, and I now know that this is not a figure of speech."
I had to stop and just bask, after I first read that sentence.
And there've been other things that are superficially, perfectly brilliant, like a comment of Martin's: "Even though our problems had driven us up there, it was as if they had somehow, like Daleks, been unable to climb the stairs."
Or another comment of JJ's: "How do people, like, not curse? How is it possible? There are all these gaps in speech where you just have to put a 'fuck.' I'll tell you who the most admirable people in the world are: newscasters. If that was me, I'd be like, 'And the motherfuckers flew the fucking plane right into the Twin Towers.' How could you not, if you're a human being?" After I read that I didn't know whether to laugh or cringe, but either way it was just so true I couldn't think.
Hornby's writing is full of that; I think I could quote High Fidelity or About a Boy at you all day, and How To Be Good contains one of the best passages about love and pain I've ever read, but he always surprises me. Each time I come across perfect quote, I just want to carve it into my brain.
Two bigger passages, though, are still hitting me:
"I don't know you. The only thing I know about you is, you're reading this. I don't know here you're happy or not; I don't know whether you're young or not. I sort of hope you're young and sad. If you're old and happy, I can imagine that you'll maybe smile to yourself when you hear me going, He broke my heart. You'll remember someone who broke your heart, and you'll think to yourself, Oh, yes, I can remember how that feels. But you can't, you smug old git. Oh, you might remember feeling sort of pleasantly sad. You might remember listening to music and eating chocolates in your room, or walking along the Embankment on your own, wrapped up in a winter coat and feeling lonely and brave. But can you remember how with every mouthful of food it felt like you were biting into your own stomach? Can you remember the taste of red wine as it came back up and into the toilet bowl? Can you remember dreaming every night that you were still together, that he was talking to you gently and touching you, so that every morning when you woke up you had to go through it all over again? Can you remember carving his initials in your arm with a kitchen knife? Can you remember standing too close to the edge of an Underground platform? No? Well, fucking shut up, then. Stick your smile up your saggy old arse."
And my last quote, a passage I read today:
"I thought I couldn't go wrong with Nick Drake, especially in a room full of people who've got the blues. If you haven't heard him...man, it's like he boiled down all the melancholy in the world, all the bruises and all the fucked-up dreams you've let go, and poured the essence into a little tiny bottle and corked it up. And when he starts to play and sing, he takes the cork out, and you can smell it. You're pinned into your seat, as if it's a wall of noise, but it's not--it's still and quiet, and you don't want to breathe in case you frighten it away."
[Jess and Martin proceed to totally NOT GET it.]
"I wondered whether it would be possible to punch both of them out simultaneously, but rejected the idea on the grounds that it would all be over too quickly, and there wouldn't be enough pain involved. I'd want to keep on pummeling them after they were down, which would mean doing the one at a time. It's music rage, which is like road rage, only more righteous. When you get road rage, a tiny part of you knows you're being a jerk, but when you get music rage, you're carrying out the will of God, and God wants these people dead."
I haven't mentioned anything Maureen's said, though I love her and her pitiful sadness. Martin's great and Jess is hilariously [and not-so-hilariously] spot-on, but I think JJ is where Hornby speaks out from the most. It's all perfect and so true and I love it...and I'm almost 2/3 done.
Also, there's a DJ Goodnews shout-out, which is all sorts of awesome.
[This post brought to you by the How Long Can Eve Hold Out On Watching Army Of Ghosts And Doomsday? Fundation.