Hornby explores life, love and loss, and tosses in a great soundtrack
Published: October 04, 2009, 12:30 am
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Along time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I went a little crazy for a Canadian rock band called the Lowest of the Low.
The band was terrific, their songs memorable and their lead singer-songwriter, Ron Hawkins, a remarkable talent who was nonetheless hellbent on obscurity.
But my interest had, perhaps, less to do with all of that than with What It Meant To Me.
Fandom was a reason to grip a plastic beer cup and bop around Lafayette Square or the Tralf or Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern or the Cabana Room at the Spadina Hotel for many euphoric, exhausting hours. It was a way of bonding with friends who happened to feel the same way.
And it gave me the opportunity— no, the obligation—to sing, very loud, in my car every day, as my Low cassette (yes, children) explored love and loss and longing in songs with titles like, “Bleed a Little While Tonight.”
Pop music as life lens: This postwar, boomer-inspired phenomenon is what British novelist and critic Nick Hornby understands better than any other writer.
In “High Fidelity,” his first novel (published in 1995, it was later made into a John Cusack movie and then a Broadway musical), Hornby used pop music as a sound track for fiction in a way no one had seen before.
His endearingly neurotic protagonist, Rob, is a record store owner and compulsive listmaker, who is painfully recounting his worst romantic breakups as he also rates and ranks albums and artists, and creates a compilation tape for Laura, who has inflicted his most recent heartbreak.
Both book and movie became a cult classic among music lovers. Why? Consider the opening lines:
“What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”
Now, Hornby is out with a new novel, a cousin to “High Fidelity,” and a full return to his theme of pop music as a way to understand and express everything else.
Since Hornby enjoys lists and gimmicks, I’ll join that party. Here, in reverse order, is what I like about “Juliet, Naked”:
5. It creates an iconic fictional character. There’s Holden Caulfield, there’s Ebenezer Scrooge and now there’s Tucker Crowe. Crowe is a reclusive former rock star who has developed an obsessive following on blogs and Web sites, even as he lives a boring middle-American life. Trailing ex-wives and children from past marriages, dripping with self-loathing and bounced checks, he is equal parts J. D. Salinger and Bob Dylan. And what do you know? He’s still capable of falling in love.
4. It features an iconic fictional album. That would be Tucker Crowe’s greatest accomplishment, “Juliet,” which sounds suspiciously like “Blood on the Tracks,” and is described in the Hornby-esque superlative as the greatest breakup album of all time—a genius-fueled, angst-ridden tribute to a gorgeous but airheaded model named Julie Beatty.
The detail on the imaginary songs and their lyrics is such that we can practically sing along by the time we close the book. Oh, yes, “Juliet, Naked” is the bare-bones, “Basement Tapes” version that Crowe releases late in life when he needs the cash infusion.
3. It brims with pop music allusions. A past-its-prime seaside town in England is compared to the sad New Jersey beach resorts whence Bruce Springsteen hailed. Annie, who is Tucker Crowe’s newest love interest, may be pretty but she isn’t quite Dylan’s “girl from the North Country.” And somebody wants to know if Billy Joel can be described as a singer-songwriter, only one of the none-too-subtle putdowns of the Piano Man here.
If you live in the pop music world, you can easily decipher the code, and have great fun doing so. After all, it’s always satisfying to know the secret handshake.
2. It makes us laugh. Hornby is funny; he just has the gift. I’m not big on laughing out loud while reading, but it happened here, and more than once. I’d explain but, well, you had to be there.
1. It grasps the human condition. Music may be the place we connect but it’s really just that, a venue. If pop music didn’t exist, we’d be forced to connect over polar bears or shuffleboard strategies, and, for all I know, some people do. The most important thing is the humanity.
Hornby knows that we are frail, flawed, battered and bruised; that our intentions are good but our execution is haphazard; that we have our hearts broken and somehow get up, dust ourselves off and manage a crooked smile as we hobble off into the uncertain future, where, with any luck, there will be a great jukebox.
Margaret Sullivan is the editor of The News.
FICTION
Juliet, Naked
By Nick Hornby
Riverhead
406 pages, $25.95
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