There are two kinds of Fever in this world...
With the World Cup on, and football much on everyone's mind, I thought I would kick off the No Mas Book Review Series with a look back at the greatest soccer book to ever spawn a terrible baseball movie – Nick Hornby’s “Fever Pitch.” I brought it along with me on my ill-conceived flight to Paris on Air India, and in that the general symphony of infant caterwauling during the flight precluded any sleep, I pretty much tore through the whole thing from Newark to Paris, stopping only to eat something that had been deceitfully described to me as curry, and subsequently to fart.
Hornby’s conceit, a moment of inspiration if ever there was one, is to tell the story of his life, and in some ways the story of England in the 70’s and 80’s, through the prism of a variety of football matches that he attended during those decades. Chapters are titled “Liam Brady,” and then subtitled “Arsenal v. Everton, 5.5.80,” etc., with the given match used as a jumping-off point to then ruminate, usually about himself, at times about the state of the nation, but always about the state of football, in particular, his beloved Arsenal.
Hornby’s main obsession is his own obsessiveness, which is unfortunate – after a while, the whole “what is wrong with me that I’m such a crazy fan?” cri de coeur wears thin. We get it mate – you fucking love Arsenal like Orpheus loved Eurydice, it’s a mystifying business. For all the criticism he likes to level at himself for what trouble his childlike football passions bring him, he seems on the whole awfully proud of his fanaticism. At times the tone veers off into what would later become Hornby’s hallmark: self-satisfied slacker smugness.
That said, the best of this book is rewarding stuff. He establishes himself as the poet laureate of The Suffering Provincial Sports Fan, does a hilarious job of parodying the dorkish male’s mania for statistics, and most impressively, finds in his football journeys a truly Wordsworthian narrative of loss, both in his own personal life and in England at large. His treatment of the Hillsbrough tragedy has particular gravitas. “Fever Pitch” the book is borne of an inspired idea, and at about 220 pages, it’s an engaging read easily consumed in the most dire of circumstances.
How on earth this book--an often moving account of one fervent Arsenal fan’s coming of age in Thatcher’s England - became a bullshit Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore disaster of a movie about the Boston Red Sox I can’t begin to imagine. It’s shameful, the worst we have to offer the world as Americans.
words: Dave Larzalere
Hornby’s conceit, a moment of inspiration if ever there was one, is to tell the story of his life, and in some ways the story of England in the 70’s and 80’s, through the prism of a variety of football matches that he attended during those decades. Chapters are titled “Liam Brady,” and then subtitled “Arsenal v. Everton, 5.5.80,” etc., with the given match used as a jumping-off point to then ruminate, usually about himself, at times about the state of the nation, but always about the state of football, in particular, his beloved Arsenal.
Hornby’s main obsession is his own obsessiveness, which is unfortunate – after a while, the whole “what is wrong with me that I’m such a crazy fan?” cri de coeur wears thin. We get it mate – you fucking love Arsenal like Orpheus loved Eurydice, it’s a mystifying business. For all the criticism he likes to level at himself for what trouble his childlike football passions bring him, he seems on the whole awfully proud of his fanaticism. At times the tone veers off into what would later become Hornby’s hallmark: self-satisfied slacker smugness.
That said, the best of this book is rewarding stuff. He establishes himself as the poet laureate of The Suffering Provincial Sports Fan, does a hilarious job of parodying the dorkish male’s mania for statistics, and most impressively, finds in his football journeys a truly Wordsworthian narrative of loss, both in his own personal life and in England at large. His treatment of the Hillsbrough tragedy has particular gravitas. “Fever Pitch” the book is borne of an inspired idea, and at about 220 pages, it’s an engaging read easily consumed in the most dire of circumstances.
How on earth this book--an often moving account of one fervent Arsenal fan’s coming of age in Thatcher’s England - became a bullshit Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore disaster of a movie about the Boston Red Sox I can’t begin to imagine. It’s shameful, the worst we have to offer the world as Americans.
words: Dave Larzalere
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