70. HIGH FIDELITY

Nick Hornby 1995

This poignantly funny book rich with references to many of my favorite songs and movies is about the musings of thirty five year old Rob Fleming as he ponders his music, his friends, his loves and his future. He is fond of top five-lists and the book opens with his top five list of past relationships as he analyzes what went wrong with his most current break-up with Laura who has left him for their neighbor Ian. With his record store in London called Championship vinyls barely surviving, his only friends Dick and Barry seemingly losers, his lack of any foreseeable stable future, he is lost, insecure and lonely.

'MY desert-island, all time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order:'(opening line)

'And we no longer admired people who had gone out together for a long time; we were sarcastic about them, and they were even sarcastic about themselves. In a few short weeks, mock-marital status had ceased to be something to aspire to, and had become a cause for scorn. At seventeen, we were becoming as embittered and as unromantic as our parents.'(20)

'What came first--the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?'(24)

'People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands-- literally thousands-- of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.'(25)

'This is how I commemorate my return to the Kingdom of the Single: I sit down in my chair, the one that will stay here with me, and pick bits of my stuffing out of the arm; I light a cigarette, even though it is still early and I don't really feel like one, simply because I am now free to smoke whenever I want, without rows; I wonder whether I have already met the next person I will sleep with, or whether it will be someone currently unknown to me; I wonder what she looks like, and whether we'll do it here, or at her place, and what that place will be like;'(36)

'My shop is called Championship Vinyl. I sell punk, blues, soul and R&B, a bit of ska, some indie stuff, some sixties pop-- everything for the serious record collector, as the ironically old-fashioned writing in the window says.'(37)

'The woman we have come to see is called Marie LaSalle...There are a lot of single men here-- not single as in unmarried, but single as in no friends. In this sort of company the three of us--me morose and monosyllabic, Dick nervy and shy, Barry solicitously self-censoring--constitute a wild and massive office outing.'(60)

'There are many songs that I've been trying to avoid since Laura went, but the song that Marie LaSalle opens with, the song that makes me cry, is not one of them. The song that makes me cry has never made me cry before; in fact, the song that makes me cry used to make me puke... The song that makes me cry is Marie LaSalle's version of Peter Frampton's "Baby, I Love Your Way."(61)

'...sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostalgic and hopeful all at the same time.'(63)

'It's only just beginning to occur to me that it's important to have something going on somewhere, at work or at home, otherwise you're just clinging on...You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then? '(74)

'The other people I like are the ones who are being driven to find a tune that has been troubling them, distracting them, a tune that they can hear in their breath when they run for a bus, or in the rhythm of their windshield wipers when they're driving home from work. Sometimes, something banal and obvious is responsible for the distraction: They have heard it on the radio, or at a club. But sometimes it has come to them as if by magic.'(96)

'A while back, when Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for prospective partners, a two-or three- page multiple-choice document that covered all the music/film/TV book bases. It was intended to a)dispense with awkward conversation, and b)to prevent a chap from leaping into bed with someone who might, at a later date, turn out to have every Julio Iglesias record ever made.'(117)

'She tells me that she thought I was cute, a word that no one has ever previously used in connection with me, and soulful, by which I think she means that I don't say much and I always look vaguely pissed off.'(124)

'I don't belong at home, and I don't want to belong at home, but at least home is somewhere I know.'(133)

'See, records have helped me fall in love, no question. I hear something new, with a chord change that melts my guts, and before I know it I 'm looking for someone, and before I know it I've found her.'(170)

'The most important thing in life, and you can't tell whether people have it or not. Surely this is wrong? Surely people who are happy should look happy, at all times...'(226)

"I'm just trying to show you that you've lived half your life, but all you've got to show for it you might as well be nineteen, and I'm not talking about money or property or furniture." I know she's not. She's talking about detail, clutter, the stuff that stops you floating away.'(266)

'And there is such a thing as the look of love--Dusty didn't lead us up the garden path entirely--it's just that the look of love isn't what I expected it to be. It's not huge eyes almost bursting with longing situated somewhere in the middle of a double bed with the covers turned down invitingly; it's just as likely to be the look of benevolent indulgence that a mother gives a toddler, or a look of amused exasperation, even a look of pained concern. But the Dusty Springfield look of love? Forget it. As mythical as the exotic underwear.'(273)

'Everybody's faith needs testing from time to time...I have to confess (but only to myself, obviously) that maybe, given the right set of peculiar, freakish, probably unrepeatable circumstance, it's not what you like but what you're like that's important.'(280)

'OK. Definitive top five. Number one, 'Let's Get It On,' by Marvin Gaye. Number two, 'This Is The House That Jack Built,' by Aretha Franklin. Number three, 'Back in the USA,' by Chuck Berry. Number four, 'White Man in the Hammersmith Palais,' by the Clash. And the last one, last but not least, ha ha, 'So tired of Being alone,' by Al Green.'(313)

Riverhead Paperback edition, August 1996
323 pages
Book borrowed from JRMD