Kyle Pearson Pearson itibaren Somerset East, South Africa
I like the way Hornby is entirely focused on the single song - he doesn't have that classic rock critic obsession with the album as some sort of holistic entity (and as we all know from the popular press, what with their iTunes store and everything, today's kids don't care about that either, but Hornby is probably about 50, which puts him in prime "40 minute rock album as Platonic ideal form" territory), nor does he, for that matter, seem to care much about the history of the artists nor give much sociological context outside of his own personal history, which fortunately he writes about engagingly enough to make you care (note to self: this is just the kind of writing you've been claiming you should try to do at book length - should you?). For example, Motown is not an outgrowth of the culture of black midwestern American teenagers in the early 1960s, it is something that inspired a whole set of feelings in Nick in Camden Town or somewhere in the early 80s. Ani DiFranco strikes me (perhaps mistakenly) as an artist where one has to work through a whole set of feelings about feminism and cult fandom to enjoy - Hornby just likes one particular song because it resonated with something going on in his marriage. Finally the personal tone of the writing made me worry about how his autistic son is doing (5 years or so having gone by) - how to get an update on that? In addition to these essays on being a listener, I very much enjoyed his collection "The Polysyllabic Spree" on being a reader - haven't actually ventured into his fiction beyond "High Fidelity" which I complicated for myself by reading after I saw the film.