Put Down The Pen

Something I only just realised today is that authors, like bands or singers, tend to have a short time at the top of their game. They can be fashionable for a time - film adaptations, being asked to appear on radio/TV shows, write columns for broadsheets etc etc - before the relentless ticking of time creeps up leaving you gasping in the wake of the next pretender to the throne.

What got me thinking of this was flicking through Nick Hornby's High Fidelity for the first time in a good few years. From the mid 90s to the early part of the last decade, Hornby had it all rolling in his favour. His debut football-themed autobiography Fever Pitch sold by the shedload and got taken on big-time by a new generation of football supporters to the degree that many old school fans blame him for the sanitation of the game through the 90s. High Fidelity and About A Boy were equally successful follow-ups to the degree that he even got away with having a bunch of essays on his favourite songs published.

All three of his first books, in turn, were made into films, with Colin Firth, John Cusack and Hugh Grant playing the main characters. Given that all the protagonists were, at least in some part, based on Hornby himself, it must have been a buzz to have three handsome devils play the roles.

And yet, and yet... it seems to me, albeit somebody who's rarely had his finger on the cultural heartbeat, that Horny's star has fallen since those heady days. For starters, his third novel, How To Be Good, came across as a load of middle-class toss and for all his supposed love of music, his dismissal of British Sea Power from looking at a picture of them alone gave me the impression he preferred his music to be as safe and predictable as rock music allows.

Re-reading High Fidelity, one thing struck me hard. It's a decent novel, certainly, with some great lines and jokes, but the plot doesn't hold up to much scrutiny - would any self-respecting woman really take back a man who owes her thousands of pounds and cheated on her - and for a novel written by a guy in his mid 30s, it does come across as being the work of a much younger man at times.

All of which is not to take anything away from the chap. He made the top of the pile where countless others didn't and I'm sure his healthy bank balance, collection of awards and writing an album with Ben Folds means he doesn't give a toss what anyone thinks. That said, I do think his music journalism is third rate at best and 31 Songs was one of the most tedious books I've ever read.