A chat with Nick Hornby | Features | News | Arsenal.com Author, movie producer and Arsenal fan... Nick Hornby A chat with Nick Hornby Author Nick Hornby is one of Arsenal's most well-known fans. His iconic memoir Fever Pitch tells the tale of his obsession with the Club, and has inspired vast numbers of people to also become fans of Arsenal, and the game of soccer itself. The novels High Fidelity and About a Boy were adapted for the big screen, helping to make Hornby one of this generation's best-known writers. Hornby's latest novel Juliet, Naked was released in September, and the film An Education, for which he wrote the screenplay, is in theaters now. USA.Arsenal.com's Kevin Mooney caught up with Nick Hornby to talk about his books, his passion for the Club, and what he thinks of the season so far. USA.Arsenal.com: Anytime I talk about Arsenal in the U.S., Fever Pitch very often comes up. Did you have any idea it would become a must-read for fans new to the game, especially those in America? Nick Hornby: No, of course not! And in any case, there was very little interest in football in the U.S.

when the book was first published – it really seems to have changed over the last few years. USA.Arsenal.com: The book played a huge role in creating many dedicated Arsenal fans in the US, me included. Do you ever get tired of hearing this? Nick Hornby: No, never. Every now and again on a book tour I end up watching an Arsenal game in a bar in the U.S. somewhere, and when I see all the Arsenal shirts I have caught myself wondering whether any of them are on those particular backs because of my book, but there’s no way of knowing, and I haven’t ever owned up to anyone I get talking to. If what you say is true, though, it’s a good feeling. USA.Arsenal.com: How has the game changed in the 15 years-or-so since the book was published? Nick Hornby: I think more has changed in those 15 years than in the 92 years of the 20th century that preceded publication. It’s definitely more commercial than it used to be, and there is now saturation coverage in the English media: when I was a kid, you could go weeks on end without finding a single word about the game during the summer.

Now it’s the back-page headline pretty much seven days a week, unless England are winning the Ashes. Arsenal was a mostly British team when the book was published, and live league games were a relatively new phenomenon (there had never been a single live top division game on TV until I was in my late 20s). Right near the old ground is a chip shop, and in the chip shop were pictures of old players – Lee Dixon, Tony Adams, Ian Wright etc. But the amazing thing was that the pictures were all taken inside the shop, while they were collecting their takeaway cod and chips – and that was in the mid-90s! It’s hard to imagine those days coming back. USA.Arsenal.com: You wrote the book before Arsène Wenger came to North London and Arsenal's ensuing success on the pitch. Do you think the book would have been any different had you written it 10 years later? Nick Hornby: I think tonally it would have been pretty similar, even if it had probably ended on a high. I’m glad, though, that Arsène hadn’t arrived by the time the book was published. It would have been much more difficult to shape the book.

USA.Arsenal.com: It’s clear that Highbury was a very special place to you. What do you miss about it? Nick Hornby: I was thinking the other day, when I was taking my six-year-old to a game, that when I started going, I was very aware of how old the ground was – that people had been pushing through those creaky old turnstiles for a long time. When I first went to Highbury, there would have been people in the ground that could remember when they’d first arrived in North London. Now my kid does what he has to do everywhere else - put a credit card into a slot until he hears the electronic beep. It’s hard to be romantic about a place like that. Maybe his kids will feel differently. Most of all, though, I miss the trophy celebrations that soaked into the walls. The Emirates just hasn’t been a happy place yet. A few good games, sure, but nothing that’s made the stands shake. USA.Arsenal.com: It’s been four years since Arsenal won a trophy. How big of a deal is this to you as a long-time supporter? Nick Hornby: Not that big at all.

I think the complaining is a measure of how spoiled we’ve become. When I started going they hadn’t won anything for 17 years, and there was nothing between 1971 and 1979, or ‘79 and 1987. Most teams don’t win anything most years. Why do West Ham fans buy season tickets? Or Everton fans? Because they love their team and they like getting out of the house of a weekend to watch a game. We’ve had two finals and four or five semi-finals in those four years, and one of the finals was in the Champions League, and though losing those games was disappointing, it still meant that we had something to play for at the business end of the season. In the end it’s about whether you enjoy going or not, and anyone who hasn’t enjoyed watching Arsenal in the last few years, especially at home, can’t really like football much. USA.Arsenal.com: How often are you normally able to attend matches? Nick Hornby: I don’t miss many. I moved to London for good in 1984, and since then I doubt I’ve missed 20 home games.

A combination of a stay-at-home job and a home 10 minutes’ walk from the Emirates make it pretty easy. USA.Arsenal.com: You’ve been quite busy for a good part of this season with a book tour for Juliet, Naked and the release of the film An Education, for which you wrote the screenplay. Have you had opportunities to see many matches this season? What do you think of the season and squad so far? Nick Hornby: I missed the Blackburn and the Olympiacos games, but I’ve seen the rest. It’s been incredibly enjoyable, even if the fear remains that we have a glass jaw. Alan Hansen said on Match of the Day recently that he’d never seen a team more likely to concede when they were on top. It’s true, and completely maddening. But suddenly it looks like we have a squad, and a bench with both experience and talent. I still can’t see us finishing above Chelsea, but there are promising signs. USA.Arsenal.com: Arsenal’s Charity of the Season in 2007/08 was TreeHouse, a London-based school for autistic children.

What can you tell us about TreeHouse, and the kind of work the Club has done with the school and its students? Nick Hornby: My son Danny, who is now 16, is a pupil at TreeHouse, hence my involvement. I had no idea the club would be as proactive as it was, but they were great – the kids had several visits from players and the manager, and it was the players’ idea to give up a day’s wages for the school. I was there on the day that Cesc and William Gallas visited – Matt Lucas, the comedian and actor, and I were playing football with Cesc and the kids in the playground, but neither of us let the kids have a kick. We kept passing the ball to Cesc, and making ourselves available for the return. Tragic, but predictable. USA.Arsenal.com: We mentioned that you have a new book and new movie out now. While neither An Education‚ nor Juliet, Naked are about football, they definitely involve themes that will be familiar to your loyal readers. Why should they be on everyone’s reading/viewing list?

Nick Hornby: Well, I have to say I’m pleased with how both of them turned out, although it’s easier to talk about An Education, because it involved the work of a lot of talented people. It’s a film about a teenage girl’s affair with an unsuitable older man at the beginning of the 1960s, and our young actress Carey Mulligan is sensational. She’ll get an Oscar nomination, I think. Juliet, Naked is about love, regret, music and the Internet, and it’s in all good bookshops now. Copyright 2017 The Arsenal Football Club plc. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to as the source 4 Nov 2009 Fever Pitch: Nick Hornby: 9781573226882: Amazon.com: Books Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review In the States, Nick Hornby is best know as the author of High Fidelity and About a Boy , two wickedly funny novels about being thirtysomething and going nowhere fast.

In Britain he is revered for his status as a fanatical football writer (sorry, fanatical soccer writer), owing to Fever Pitch--which is both an autobiography and a footballing Bible rolled into one. Hornby pinpoints 1968 as his formative year--the year he turned 11, the year his parents separated, and the year his father first took him to watch Arsenal play. The author quickly moved "way beyond fandom" into an extreme obsession that has dominated his life, loves, and relationships. His father had initially hoped that Saturday afternoon matches would draw the two closer together, but instead Hornby became completely besotted with the game at the expense of any conversation: "Football may have provided us with a new medium through which we could communicate, but that was not to say that we used it, or what we chose to say was necessarily positive." Girlfriends also played second fiddle to one ball and 11 men. He fantasizes that even if a girlfriend "went into labor at an impossible moment" he would not be able to help out until after the final whistle.

Fever Pitch is not a typical memoir--there are no chapters, just a series of match reports falling into three time frames (childhood, young adulthood, manhood). While watching the May 2, 1972, Reading v. Arsenal match, it became embarrassingly obvious to the then 15-year-old that his white, suburban, middle-class roots made him a wimp with no sense of identity: "Yorkshire men, Lancastrians, Scots, the Irish, blacks, the rich, the poor, even Americans and Australians have something they can sit in pubs and bars and weep about." But a boy from Maidenhead could only dream of coming from a place with "its own tube station and West Indian community and terrible, insoluble social problems." Fever Pitch reveals the very special intricacies of British football, which readers new to the game will find astonishing, and which Hornby presents with remarkable humor and honesty--the "unique" chants sung at matches, the cold rain-soaked terraces, giant cans of warm beer, the trains known as football specials carrying fans to and from matches in prisonlike conditions, bottles smashing on the tracks, thousands of policemen waiting in anticipation for the cargo of hooligans.

The sport and one team in particular have crept into every aspect of Hornby's life--making him see the world through Arsenal-tinted spectacles. --Naomi Gesinger Book Review: Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby -- or what it means to be a fan - Hot Time In Old Town Hot Time In Old Town BRIDGEVIEW, IL - JULY 16: Chicago Fire fans light flares during the match between the Chicago Fire and the Portland Timbers during an MLS match on July 16, 2011 at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Illinois. (Photo by David Banks/Getty Images) Getty Images Superficially, Fever Pitch (by Nick Hornby) is about Arsenal. Superficially, it's all about Arsenal's ups and downs, the history of the club, and how the wins and losses intertwined with the author's life. If you look closer, however, what the book is actually about is being a fan. It's about being obsessive. It's about falling into long daydreams about a good game your team once had or fretting over a bad run and when somebody asks "What are you thinking about?", not being able to explain it.

If you say you're thinking about your team, it sounds a bit stupid and trite, so sometimes you have to lie. "But then, obsessives have no choice; they have to lie on occasions like this. If we told the truth every time, then we would be unable to maintain relationships with anyone from the real world." (After the jump: more of the review, plus quotes from various sports fans.) The book is about loving a team so much that you might sometimes hate them just a little. It's about the quirks of being a sports fan; the rampant superstition and knowing that you can't influence the result (but you have to do something), being selfishness, being unreasonable, and sometimes, after you've had a miserable day and then your team lost, feeling like your own fortunes are intrinsically linked to that of your own team. "See after awhile it all gets mixed up together in your head, and you can't remember whether life's shit because Arsenal are shit or the other way around." The book is a personal memoir, a tribute to Arsenal, and a mirror for sports fans everywhere. A smidgen of Premier League knowledge is preferable.

It may be slightly overwhelming unless you know that there are draws and cup replays, and understand a little bit about the culture, the hooliganism, and history involved -- but the book is so engaging that it almost doesn't matter. It's funny, too. It's a bit tongue-in-cheek and throughout it Nick Hornby laughs at himself and his compatriots without making sports fans as a whole seem too stupid. Granted, this is because he outrightly calls himself and the rest of the obsessives idiots, but I will gladly accept this title, and the way he writes about it makes it almost logical. Almost. Drawing from his own experiences, he puts being a sports fan into written word. "While the details here are unique to me, I hope that they will strike a chord with anyone who has ever found themselves drifting off, in the middle of a working day or a film or a conversation, towards a left-foot volley into a top right-hand corner ten or fifteen or twenty-five years ago." With some help from a few friends and acquaintances, I put together a Fever Pitch-esque collection of quotes. Some are from soccer fans. A couple are not. Some are from supporters of their team from childhood. Some are not.

Some of these quotes are from fans who live thousands of miles away from their team. No matter what the case, though, I think these quotes will resonate with anyone reading this review. We are all fans. Before I leave you to it, a huge thanks to everyone who responded to me, and I hope everyone reading enjoys this slightly more special review that I put together before tomorrow's home opener. Tomorrow, let's be unreasonable, superstitious, and idiotic about the Chicago Fire together. --- "I love Juventus as I love almost nothing else. They're a lifestyle. When I take a shower in the morning, that week's match or a player injury, etc usually crosses my mind at some point. When I'm at work, my mind often goes to Juve. I build my schedule around their matches. My mental state usually falls in line with their results." [...] Losing is horrid. There's no other way to put it. It saps my energy, and depending on the kind of loss, makes me anti-social for a few days. An infuriating loss makes me want to rant, to family, to fellow supporters, to my poor bff. I want to analyze all of the "shit that went down".

I want to be masochistic about it on some level. Some losses though are just sad. I want to drink. I'm mopey at work. I want to be left alone and don't want to think about the match." --Allison, Juventus fan "I enjoy following TFC because it's like a hometown team for me (I live east of Toronto). It's a young team so it's like you're witnessing history happen right in front of you, and that makes it feel special. Times have been rough, and it's not a team that does particularly well, but it doesn't matter because it's ours, it's home. Whenever we get a great win or a domestic cup or get a step further in a competition, it feels so sweet because of all the hard times that came before." --Sairax, Toronto FC fan "I've only been a City fan since 2004, so the refrain "typical City" resonates a little less with me than some of lifelong fans. City has had a great run of form over the last few years too. Still, nothing guts me like a loss.

I try to shake it off, congratulate the other team, and get my day back on track, but that's often easier said than done. [...] Wins are euphoric. There is nothing like hearing the supporters sing "Blue Moon" or watching them do the Poznan. Manchester City's tradition is so rich, nothing is more deserved for the club and its fans than earning three points." --Matt Darst, Manchester City fan "People fall out of love with their childhood teams all the time. Perhaps they nurse a small bit of sympathy- they check the scores every now and then, and they smile to themselves when the club wins a trophy. It's easy to lose touch, I suppose, but then again, I wouldn't know. I never fell out of love with Real Madrid. Through the late '90s, I watched Raúl and Mori tear apart seasoned defenses with ease. I watched Madrid win a few league trophies, a few champions leagues. Then came the revolving door of managers, and through it all, Madrid kept its identity whole. Madridismo may have been tested, but it never faltered.

It was to madridismo that I clung, watching matches at home with my family and at school on my laptop, refreshing grainy streams every few minutes and praying I didn't miss a goal." --Hannah, Real Madrid fan "I enjoy having a sense of being part of my family that, regardless of where they are, feel the same way as I do when the team in black and white is on the pitch. I love the tradition of my Atlético Mineiro, the way it was started over 100 years ago by a group of students. I enjoy knowing that a club can carry on through generations, and you'll be a small part of it while you live." -- Deborah Ferreira, Atlético Mineiro fan "I am a fan of 1. FSV Mainz 05 in the German Bundesliga. Mainz is a small team with reasonably small dreams but a huge heart. I love Mainz because I feel like it is run by people who also love it and have the same goals and desires as I do.

Every decision made by the club feels genuine, driven not by commercial aspirations but a love of football and a desire to create a family which includes both the team and the fans." --Anne Gillies, Mainz fan "When the Dodgers win, it's like my family just won, because they've been such a HUGE part of my life. I feel protective of the players and I lose my mind when they're successful. I tear up just thinking about Clayton Kershaw pitching a no-hitter or a perfect game someday. When Matt Kemp was chasing 50/50 last year, I held my breath through every at-bat. When the Dodgers win, it's like the day is brighter and if at all possible, I always play "I Love LA" by Randy Newman, because that's what they play at Chavez Ravine after every Dodger win." --Nicole Lechuga, Dodgers fan "It's about how nothing else matters after you win. There's also a bit of that after a loss, too, though. There's nothing like a crowd of thousands of people sullenly leaving a stadium all heart-broken because their dumb team just couldn't get it done.

It's terrible, but it's kind of wonderful at the same time because you're all together and nothing outside the stadium matters for that moment. This is possibly unhealthy, but there's nothing really healthy about being a sports fan." --Angie, fan of various South Florida teams "[I love following Manchester United] I think for the same reason anyone loves their team - the community, the emotion, the excitement. It's very tribal in some ways. To me there's no experience quite like being in a football crowd, 75,000 strong if you're at Old Trafford - the noise, the chants, the feeling of being one with everyone around you. The way everyone cheers at the same time, stands up at the same time, the kind of collective emotion, it's electric. I still remember the way I felt when I went to my first football match, walking up the steps, hearing the hum of the crowd before I came out into the stands and saw it all spread out before me, the green pitch, the bright lights. It was...electric is the only word for it.

I feel the same thing every time I go to a game, walking up to the stadium through the crowds and the stalls, it's like a carnival atmosphere, the feeling of just-suppressed excitement. And there's the other side too - just as the tribalism can lead to horrible things, horrible words and accusations and chants, it's good at bringing people together. When you're at Old Trafford, there's no black and white, no Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, no male and female. You're all United fans. You're all in it together. And those eleven men on the pitch are your family, and you support them through thick and thin." --Denorios, Manchester United fan "The friendships that are made are as deep as family ties, you have cried, bled, drank, mourned, and joyed with these people... that's family. I have spent more time with my fellow Section 8 on tour regulars than any of my friends from highschool since I was 18. [...] Winning at home is a high not matched by any narcotic. Stress is killed, life is good.

When you travel away and have the whole 3pts to come home with, there is not a price I wouldn't pay for that feeling. Winning makes me Dance." --Pattrick WB05 and S8OT, Chicago Fire fan When there is some kind of triumph, the pleasure does not radiate from the players outwards until it reaches the likes of us at the back of the terraces in a pale and diminished form; our fun is not a watery version of the team's fun [...]. The joy we feel on occasions like this is not a celebration of others' good fortune, but a celebration of our own; and when there is a disastrous defeat the sorrow that engulfs us is, in effect, self-pity, and anyone who wishes to understand how football is consumed must realize this above all things. All quotes from Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby, Riverhead Books, 1992 More From Hot Time In Old Town Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch is now a Penguin Classic - Telegraph Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch is now a Penguin Classic Nick Hornby’s memoir about being a long-suffering Arsenal fan is now part of the prestigious series.

Author Nick Hornby (right) at Highbury with former Arsenal striker Alan Smith Photo: Phil Shephard-Lewis Follow Twenty years ago publishers rejected Fever Pitch because they thought a book about football would not sell. But after the massive success of Nick Hornby’s memoir about the travails of being an Arsenal fan, his eventual publisher Penguin has decided to reissue the book in its prestigious Modern Classics series. Speaking on Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning about Fever Pitch, the academic John Sutherland described the term “Modern Classic” as a contradiction in terms. While praising Hornby’s book, he asked “Are they reading it in Paris and Moscow?” In an exclusive essay to be published in this Saturday’s Telegraph Review, Hornby reflects on the internationalisation of the English game. When Birmingham beat Arsenal in the 2011 League Cup final, their goal was scored due to a mix-up between a Frenchman and a Pole. Fever Pitch was written before the money from Sky television raised the standard, the ticket prices and the number of foreigners in the game. Arsenal itself has also changed much, says Hornby. “My previously dour and unlovable team suddenly became a byword for aesthetic perfection”.

You can discuss the Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger’s transfer policy in any bar in the world. Football is now a game for the middle classes – a trend the Cambridge-educated Hornby is accused of starting. Where once it was thought that a “football fan who reads is pretentious and posh; a poet with a season ticket is slumming it,” the situation is now more similar to that in America, where writers such as James Salter, David Remnick and Norman Mailer have written acclaimed works on sport. Related Articles Nick Hornby - Literature Literature Biography Nick Hornby was born in Redhill, Surrey, England, in 1957. He graduated from Cambridge University and taught English to foreign students while reviewing for magazines including Time Out and the Literary Review. His first book, a series of critical essays on American novelists, was published in 1992. Fever Pitch, his memoir of a life devoted to Arsenal football club, was published in 1992. It won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award and was adapted as both a play and a film, the latter starring Colin Firth.

In 2012, it was recognised for its Outstanding Contribution to Sports Writing at the British Sports Book Awards. His fiction continues to explore male obsessions, crises and weaknesses. His first novel, High Fidelity (1995), is the story of an obsessive record collector and list-maker, and was adapted as a film in 2000 starring John Cusack. His second novel, About a Boy (1998), focuses on the growing relationship between 30-something Will Freeman and Marcus, a 12-year-old boy. A film version, starring Hugh Grant, premiered in 2002. His novel, How to Be Good (2001), explores contemporary morals, marriage and parenthood. It won the WH Smith Award for Fiction in 2002. 31 Songs (2003), celebrates 31 songs of great significance to the author, and A Long Way Down (2005), was shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Novel Award and for a 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize.

His latest novels are Slam (2007), Juliet, Naked (2009) and Funny Girl (2014). In 1999 Nick Hornby was awarded the E. M. Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His book The Complete Polysyllabic Spree (2006) is an account of his reading and a collection of columns from Believer magazine. Awards Critical perspective Since the publication of Fever Pitch in 1992, Nick Hornby's work has attained both critical acclaim and great popularity with the reading public, captivating both male and female readers. In his early work in particular, his 30-something male characters, struggling with emotional maturity and wandering aimlessly in their careers and love lives, invite male readers to wryly recognise themselves and their own hapless lives, while female readers are offered an opportunity to understand the sometimes incomprehensible emotions and behaviours of their male counterparts. These portraits of British males hovering uncertainly between youth and middle age are offered without judgement or condemnation: on the contrary, Hornby presents his characters, who are often semi-autobiographical, with wry amusement and a gentle, affectionate chiding.

Later novels give more emphasis to female characters, while continuing to explore the need (and often failure) to attain emotional connection and fulfilment. Throughout all his work, Hornby's style is deceptively simple and cheerful: poignant and often heart-rending emotional issues, including the inability to form relationships, single parenthood, strange obsessions and even suicide, are depicted with colloquial, down-to-earth language, dry understated humour and a light upbeat tone that enables Hornby to combine emotional seriousness and insight with a highly entertaining and comical read. After publishing a collection of essays, Contemporary American Fiction (1992), Hornby first made an impact with Fever Pitch (1992), a non-fiction work which recounts a lifetime's devotion to Arsenal Football Club. For Hornby, an obsessive fan, memories of adolescence and early adulthood are inextricably linked with football: 'I have measured out my life in Arsenal Fixtures, and any event of any significance has a footballing shadow. When did my first real love affair end?

The day after a disappointing 2-2 draw at home to Coventry.' The success of Fever Pitch among both football fans and those who have never been near a pitch attests to the fact that it is far more than a book about sport, indicating the creative flair and capacity for self-awareness, psychological insight and humour that Hornby went on to utilise in his novels. Fever Pitch also introduces the themes that we would later see in his fiction: the nature of obsession and the search for emotional maturity and a sense of identity, with a particular emphasis on exploring male identity in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Along with football, Hornby's second passion is music, which forms the basis of his first novel, the highly successful High Fidelity (1995). Again, just as Fever Pitch is not really a book about football, High Fidelity uses the protagonist's obsession with music as a 'peg' on which to hang the issues it explores. Rob, a pop addict who runs a London record shop, is forced to re-think his approach to life when yet another relationship comes to an end.

High Fidelity, like some of the novels that follow, not only explores the contemporary male psyche and its tendency to develop obsessions, it also examines the blurred boundaries between fantasy and reality: just as Hornby's own life, recounted in Fever Pitch, is entangled with football worship, Rob sees everything through the lens of his favourite music and endless 'Top 5 Lists'. In order to function more effectively in the 'real' world and experience a healthier emotional life, he must learn to reduce his obsessions, for they endanger his ability to form meaningful relationships. Hornby's later novels continue to address similar issues, with the same wry humour, but there is a noticeable increase in emotional complexity and more focus on serious social issues. About a Boy (1998) is a hilarious yet extremely poignant story of the relationship between Will (another 30-something male who has difficulty with relationships) and Marcus, the 12-year-old son of a depressed and suicidal single mother. Unlike Rob in High Fidelity, Will, who lives off the royalties of a song written by his father, has no driving passion and no interest in anything.

His adolescent immaturity is in direct contrast to the adult-like maturity of Marcus, a complex and endearing character who is overburdened with worry. The comedy and the poignancy of the story come from the unlikely friendship that forms between the two characters, and the way in which Will helps Marcus to enjoy life and allow himself to be a child, while Marcus in turn helps Will with his long overdue growing-up. How to be Good (2001) features Hornby's first female protagonist, doctor Katie Carr. The novel, while still as funny as its predecessors, is morally and philosophically complex, exploring not only modern marriage and parenthood, but also concepts of 'goodness': Katie prides herself on being a 'good' person, so when she finds herself having an affair she is forced to do some serious soul-searching about the nature of responsibility to oneself, one's family and society. A Long Way Down (2005) also demonstrates Hornby's remarkable ability to address the most serious of issues while still creating a humorous and entertaining read. In this case the issue is suicide: four people (two male, two female) encounter each other on New Year's Eve at a well-known suicide spot.

After sharing a pizza and a long talk, each makes the decision not to end it all, and the novel is therefore less about suicide and more about the determination to go on with life. Slam (2007) features Hornby's youngest male protagonist: 16-year-old Sam, who is facing unplanned parenthood, displays both the inadequacies and the endearing qualities that are typical of Hornby's older male characters. Juliet, Naked (2009) is the story of a 30-something couple, Annie and Duncan, whose relationship is reaching its sell-by date. Duncan is obsessed with ageing rock star, Tucker Crowe, an obsession that takes up most of his time and causes him to neglect Annie. The novel therefore addresses similar issues to High Fidelity: an obsessive passion for music and a male character's emotional stuntedness and inability to connect with his girlfriend. However, Juliet, Naked has a different tone, for this time it is Annie who is the focal point and the more sympathetic character.

While Duncan remains stuck in his self-centred obsession, it is Annie who develops throughout the novel: her act of self-assertion in writing an honest, negative review of Crowe's album, Juliet, Naked, triggers an interesting correspondence with Crowe himself and marks the beginnings of a new sense of self-identity. Juliet, Naked therefore demonstrates both the continuities and the developments in Hornby's fiction: his perennial theme of bumbling men consumed by obsessive passions is ever-present, yet he manages not to bore his readers with repetitiveness, for each novel has its own freshness and originality, and his later work as a whole displays an increasing emotional depth and a willingness to address more serious issues. Elizabeth O'Reilly, 2012. Review: 31 Songs by Nick Hornby | Books | The Guardian by Nick Hornby 208pp, Penguin, £12.99 I have to confess that reviewing this book has been extremely hard. The reason is easy to explain. Here, as the title implies, are 31 pop songs that move Nick Hornby.

It is not exactly an astonishing venture from him; in fact, it seems happily inevitable, a return to the non-fiction with which he first made his name. He writes very well about being Nick Hornby - he has, after all, put in the hours - and if the idea of a plotless book that tells us how music affects his soul seems to be too close to that of a plotless book that tells us how football affects his soul, you won't find me complaining. One of the reasons I didn't like High Fidelity nearly as much as Fever Pitch was that it didn't seem to be as much of a fiction as its jacket advertised: once you realised that the music its hero loved was also music Hornby loved, something went out of the book's sails. It took the film version, with its much better soundtrack (that moment with the Beta Band!), to alert me to the merits of the story. And this is the problem with 31 Songs.

Of the 30 artists featured here, I positively adore two (Teenage Fanclub, the Beatles), respect three (Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Greg Isaacs), actively dislike five (Bruce Springsteen, Santana, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, Van Morrison) and have either no opinion (Badly Drawn Boy, J Geils Band) or have never heard of the rest (Ani DiFranco, Aimee Mann, Ben Folds Five, The Bible, Butch Hancock and Marce LaCouture). And as this book does not come with a CD of Hornby's playlist - which would be a neat idea - that remains the state of things after I've read it. Nor can I imagine I am the only reader in this position. So, should this disqualify me from pronouncing on the value or interest of this book? Is it like saying you don't or could never like Fever Pitch because you're a Spurs fan and not an Arsenal fan? Well, it is a bit like that, but Fever Pitch addressed the possibility of not supporting Arsenal in a way that 31 Songs does not address the possibility of not liking the songs.

Here, for instance, is how Hornby opens his essay on Van Morrison's "Caravan": "The magnificent version of 'Caravan' on It's Too Late to Stop Now (Van Morrison's most enjoy able album, so don't even think about arguing) sounds to me like it could be played over the closing credits of the best film you've ever seen; and if something sounds like that to you, then surely by extension it means that it could also be played at your own funeral. I don't think this is over-dramatising the importance of one's own life." This, I think, is charming, and almost wholly successful in imagining the criteria for the most significant party tape anyone ever gets the chance to compile; but with one caveat. Later on Hornby says: "The only thing that worries me about having 'Caravan' played at my funeral is that string section.

Will they think I'm making some concession to classical music when they hear it?" As they say, may all your worries be little ones, but it has not occurred to him to worry that there may be people on that grim occasion (may it be deferred as long as possible) who just don't like Van Morrison at all, not only the grumpy old man himself but the very noise he makes. Not a valid objection, you might say, but it remains true that those who know and love the tracks listed here will love and enjoy the book more than those who don't. For those, like me, who have seriously considered hurling themselves from a moving car because Van the Man was on the stereo, such matters are insuperable. (And that "don't even think about arguing" makes one think about little else.) But so much of the book is winning, and certainly readable, in the way Fever Pitch was; although what Hornby now has to endure is not mid-life failure, his parents' separation, but extraordinary success, his son's autism, his continuing love of pop music itself. On the delight in pop's very silliness he is just and exact.

He recalls his mother scornfully asking how long it took Marc Bolan to write the couplet "get it on/bang a gong", and how the correct answer ("two seconds, and it doesn't matter") came to him too late. But this is all very like your big brother whipping out whatever's on your hi-fi, replacing it with something of his choice, and saying: "Listen to this, it will make you as happy, wise and funky as me." If you need or want a big brother to do that for you, then fine. · Nicholas Lezard is writing a book about fun. Nick Hornby - I expected Arsenal to do well | News Archive | News | Arsenal.com Nick Hornby Nick Hornby - I expected Arsenal to do well Nick Hornby leapt into the public eye in the early 1990s with his book 'Fever Pitch', a chronicle of life as an Arsenal fan and the disillusionment and exhilaration it brings. The author's connection with the Club has reached a new level this year after TreeHouse was named as Arsenal's Charity of the Season; Hornby is one of the charity's co-founders. We spoke to Nick at a TreeHouse event earlier this month.

Subscribers can now see this exclusive interview on Arsenal TV Online. He discusses: his expectations of Arsenal in pre-season turning Henry's departure into a positive the players who have impressed him most this season's realistic aim why 'Fever Pitch' could not have been written now why the book is a 'history lesson' for young fans Subscribers can now see this video clip. If you don't subscribe to TV Online, click on the red button on the gold Arsenal TV Online panel. Copyright 2017 The Arsenal Football Club plc. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to as the source 20 Nov 2007 Interview: Simon Hattenstone meets Nick Hornby | Books | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close For a supposedly feelgood author, Nick Hornby's books aren't half miserable. Take Fever Pitch, his breakthrough memoir. As much as it is about football, it is about a man coping with depression, under-achieving and not belonging. Or High Fidelity, his first novel. Yes, it's the story of a music-obsessed geek, but it's also the story of an emotional illiterate who can't make head nor tail of life.

Then there's About A Boy, which features a subplot about a mother trying not to commit suicide, and How To Be Good, which portrays a middle-aged couple striving unsuccessfully to find hope in their relationship. The thing about all these books is that they are funny and warm and cute, and you don't have to mention the word depression when talking about them. Not so his latest. A Long Way Down is also comic, but there is no masking the subject here. This is depression in spades, or so you'd think. The novel has four narrators, all of them planning to kill themselves on New Year's Eve by jumping off the roof of a high-rise block in north London known as Toppers' House. "I think there's quite a strong strain of melancholy in there," Hornby says with a grin. Melancholy? That sounds poetic and enriching; isn't this just straight-down-the-line depression? "De-pre-ssion," he says slowly, savouring the syllables. "Yeah. Depression . I think I am naturally depressive." We are eating a breakfast fry-up in a cafe close to his north London home and Arsenal football club.

In the background, the coffee machine is making a noise like the beginning of the old Hawkwind song Silver Machine - something he's probably noticed. Hornby is not simply a football nut, he's a music nut and a literature nut. He may be a misery guts, but he's also one of life's enthusiasts. You could see bits of him in all four narrators - Martin is a C-list celebrity, JJ a failed rock guitarist, Maureen a mother whose life has been blighted because her son is severely disabled, and Jess a wastrel with a successful father. "Yep, yep, yep," he says as I run through the first three characters, then he stops at Jess. "That's funny - I'd never thought about the dad before." Hornby's history is rather complicated. One potted biography could read: age 48, son of successful businessman Sir Derek Hornby, graduated from Cambridge University, became a literary critic, then bestselling author and friend to the great and good. Another potted biography could read: lower-middle-class son of secretary mother Margaret, drifter, failed teacher, failed journalist, failed screenwriter, achieved surprising success with memoir of a football fanatic and loser. Both biographies would be equally true.

His father, Sir Derek, is a self-made man who ended up as chairman of Rank Xerox. Derek's own father died when he was young; his mother had four children and couldn't afford to bring him up, so she farmed him out to his grandmother. He was a bright lad who benefited from a government scheme to send able boys from poor homes to public school. He met Hornby's mother at their first workplace - he was the office boy, she was the secretary. When Nick was 11, his parents split up. His father, who unbeknown to Nick had begun another family, went to live with them in France and America; Nick remained with his mother, still a secretary in suburban Maidenhead. It made for a disjointed childhood. "Well, home was extremely normal, but my dad's life was quite exotic really. When I went away to stay with him, it was a different world. I never wanted to be in that world. I was much happier with my mates at home." I tell him that a friend of mine once visited his father's home, and told me it was the biggest house she had ever been in - it even had a lift. "I was thinking about that house the other day ...

It probably wasn't the biggest house your friend's ever been in, but it did have a lift. It was a Nash house in Regent's Park and they are quite narrow and steep. It was a Rank Xerox house - he'd been living abroad and that's where they put him up. Mum's was a little house, nice, Barratt home on a new estate, no need for a lift." He drinks his coffee and orange juice chaser, and lights another cigarette. This dual identity (and lack of identity) was at the heart of Fever Pitch. He loved life on the Arsenal terraces, but he also realised he didn't truly belong there, what with being a middle-class boy from Berkshire rather than a working-class cockney from down the road. Meanwhile, he found it embarrassing to confess his obsession to some of his posher friends, who equated football with yobbery. By the time he started writing Fever Pitch in his early 30s, he was at his lowest ebb. He had given up teaching English to pursue his brilliant career, but the writing was going nowhere, relationships were going nowhere. He'd begun therapy a year or so earlier, but couldn't settle to anything.

"The weird thing was that Fever Pitch came almost straight out of therapy," he says. "I used to go in on Monday afternoon and there was always this awkward thing at the beginning. Before you start getting into things, you sit there, and there's a long pause and she'd say, 'How was your weekend?' and I never knew what to say, so I'd say the same thing every week, which was, 'Rubbish - got beat two-nil,' and 'All right, beat Tottenham.' After about six months, she said, 'Why d'you make the same stupid joke every Monday?' I'd never thought seriously what it was all about." He realised that it wasn't really a joke. As a child, he had resented his father not being around, but they eventually forged a new relationship through football (his father took him to Highbury because that's where Nick wanted to go). Now he was an adult, football still shaped his week, his hopes and moods. He began to think of Arsenal as a metaphor for his life: boring, boring Arsenal (as they had been for decades), the chippy underachievers, so hard to love because they played such unattractive football.

Hornby hadn't always felt an outsider. He was pretty happy growing up in Maidenhead - it may have been a soulless, insular place, but he felt confident and able within its confines. Then he went to Cambridge, and it wiped his self-belief. "Studying English was useless, completely useless. It took me years to recover from that. Every time I tried to write, it sounded like a bad university essay." His first book was a cultural critique called Contemporary American Fiction . Cambridge also did for his confidence socially. He felt that he was surrounded by fellow students stuffed with certainties and an unquestioning sense of entitlement, and he shrank in the face of such bluster. "That took me a long time to recover from. I liked it in terms of I opted out and didn't do any work, but all the people who were getting on really frightened me - you know, joining the societies as soon as they got there, and writing for the Cambridge newspapers." So Hornby hung out with the losers and dossers and football fans. The trouble was that, deep down, he wanted to be one of the winners; he just didn't know how to go about it.

"I didn't have the confidence to compete." After university, he fantasised about writing for the New Musical Express, but his diffidence held him back. "It was when Julie and Tony [Burchill and Parsons - Hornby seems to be on first-name terms with everybody] were writing for the NME, and the idea of walking in there and saying 'Giz a job', brought me out in a sweat. I applied for a job on Melody Maker once." Melody Maker wasn't as cool as NME? "That's why I thought I stood a chance. I never heard back from them." He drifted from Cambridge to London and then back to Cambridge, where he taught English at a comprehensive. He says he was a well-intentioned but inept teacher, too keen to please the pupils. "I was too young, there were riots in the class." Even the pupils who liked him didn't think he was cut out for teaching.

"It was quite a hippy school, and one of my O-level kids came up at the end of the day and said, 'I've got some really good blow, d'you want to come back afterwards?' and I said, 'I don't think that's really a good idea', and very sort of pityingly. He said, 'I think you're taking the teacher thing a bit too far.' " He giggles at the memory. After two years, Hornby quit to write screenplays. Again, it didn't work out. He took lots of odd jobs to supplement his non-income from writing. His family began to despair about what would become of him. I remind him that his sister, Gill Hornby, once said they used to wonder whether he would ever own an overcoat, let alone a house. "Well, that's what I'd spent most of my time thinking," he says. How did his depression express itself? "I was never suicidal or completely black. I've always been able to enjoy aspects of my life ... It was more an utter conviction of failure - therefore what's the point?" Was he surprised by his eventual success? "Yes.

I assumed that people who were successful were on a completely parallel track, and my track just led to doom and disaster. I thought I was going back to teaching and being extremely unhappy about it for the rest of my life." He pauses, and says it wasn't quite as simple as that. There was also something within that told him Fever Pitch could be a great success, that it spoke to people who hadn't really been represented in books before, that it was a bloody good read. Fever Pitch gave birth to a whole new genre - lads' lit. To be fair, Hornby's writing was laddishness mediated through the anxious soul of the new man. He wasn't simply a bloke revelling in his blokishness, but a bloke who knew it was wrong to make football life's priority, that it was pathetic to admit he'd rather be at a match than at the birth of his first child, that childishness in a grown man was not an attractive quality. The book also established the trademark Hornby style - fluent, informal, no fancy stuff. His follow-up, High Fidelity, did for rock what Fever Pitch did for football. He portrayed his protagonist and his manifold inadequacies entirely through his obsession with music.

Of course, we read it autobiographically - here was another boy-man who couldn't commit to anything beyond his record collection. Hornby's books are full of men who can't, or who refuse to, grow up, absent fathers, struggling mothers and self-loathing characters who tell little lies to service their desires. In About A Boy, the character Will joins a single-parent group, and invents a son for himself in the hope of getting off with young single mothers who'd find any man who isn't a total bastard irresistible. His men are hugely flawed but likable. They may not be good people, but they are good enough constantly to question their motives. In How To Be Good, David, a cynical, acid-mouthed hack, meets the ridiculous guru DJ Goodnews, who shows him a new path. David starts to give away his children's toys, invites the homeless into his house, and becomes more unbearable than he was in the first place. Hornby often satirises well-meaning liberal types not unlike himself.

At times, his books may seem close to the smug, self-contained world of Richard Curtis movies such as Notting Hill and Four Weddings And A Funeral: the films of Fever Pitch and About A Boy even employ favourite Curtis actors Hugh Grant and Colin Firth as the leading characters. But when the characters of Hornby and Will are transformed into gorgeous blokes, they lose their point and their appeal. Towards the end of Fever Pitch, a girlfriend called Virginia emerged. She not only became Hornby's wife, she also became an Arsenal season ticket holder. In 1992, the book was published and became a bestseller. But, as Hornby would have expected, life did not go smoothly. In 1993, his son Danny was born. At around 18 months, he went into a terrible reverse. He lost his speech, never recovered it and was diagnosed as severely autistic. Hornby and Virginia helped start the school TreeHouse for autistic children, but the pressure of bringing up Danny, coupled with his new-found fame wreaked havoc on their relationship. Like so many parents of autistic children, they split up. Danny now divides his time between Hornby and Virginia.

He and Danny are as close as they can be, but he says it is a frustrating relationship. "You feel like a bad parent all the time, because, say, you'll be kicking a ball and maybe he'll kick it back once, but then he'll get bored and go off, and then he'll come back, so you try again, but the second time he won't come back, and you think ..." He trails off. Hornby's pale brown eyes looks as if they've spent a lifetime weeping. In A Long Way Down, Maureen wonders what her mute, wheelchair-bound son Matty would be like if he had been "normal". The book is at its most poignant when she talks about how she has created a life for him - there are posters of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Patrick Vieira on his wall, because, in her imagination, he supports Arsenal (of course) and has the hots for Sarah Michelle Gellar. Hornby says this is a dramatisation of his relationship with Danny. While he's never gone to Maureen's lengths, he understands why she does it. "One of the projects with Danny is to move him on, to make things more age-appropriate for him.

He watches Pingu all the time, and we'd rather he watched Finding Nemo. People have bought him Arsenal shirts for his birthday, and I think , 'What's the point?' but then I think, 'If I think that, what's the point of anything?' He might as well wear an Arsenal shirt as anything else." Has he ever felt as desperate about Danny as Maureen does about Matty? "I don't think as desperate ... There have been some incredibly difficult times. It's more that, through Danny, I've met a lot of people, and you're exposed to a world where there are incredibly desperate people. And they feel very let down and under an enormous amount of stress, so it's more Danny serving as an introduction to people like Maureen than Danny providing the material." Actually, he says of the four suicidal types in the novel, he probably feels closest to the failed pop star, JJ. "The thing that interested me was the fear of never being able to fulfil potential, which was a very big thing in me when I was his age.

I identify very strongly with the idea that you're in your early 30s and you've got no idea whether this is going to pay off or not, the writing thing, and if it doesn't, what are you going to do? You've told everybody that is what you're trying, and it feels that you're walking a plank and you've just got to keep going because there's a load of people waving cutlasses at you!" Just talking about it seems to bring him out in a cold sweat. The strange thing about A Long Way Down is that, despite its subject, it's probably the jolliest novel he has written, almost a romp - a suicide romp. Hornby says it was a kind of technical exercise: "I wanted to write a book that rocked, which was about something extremely downbeat, and I wanted to see if I could take these characters from the dark and to the light without being sentimental or unrealistic. If I wrote a book about depression that was incredibly depressing, why would anybody want to read it?" Hornby can be surprisingly dogmatic about what makes for good art. He's also consistent.

In 31 Songs, his book of essays about songs he loves, he argues that the best music is simple and transparent. He includes Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road because it reminds him of becoming successful and finding a voice, and Ian Dury's Reasons To Be Cheerful for its Englishness, plus Dylan and the Beatles. The only reason trendy pop groups don't write songs like the Beatles did, he says, is that they can't. As much as Hornby's prose is praised for its pared-down simplicity, it has been criticised, too, for lacking depth. For all the ennui and misery, most of his books end on an uppish note. "I think one of the reasons the books work is because people identify with that sort of depression, and they also want to be told that there might be some kind of reason to keep going." Is it a commercial decision, then, to end his books with some kind of hope? He laughs and clicks his fingers with delight. "It would be brilliant if it was a commercial decision. No. No, it's about what I want to believe. It's to offer myself consolation." Hornby says that of all his books How To Be Good was the most praised by critics.

"I had a lot of feedback from proper literary people that that was a proper literary book. Probably because it ended miserably." Does he think there's a snobbery about his writing? "Erm ..." A long time passes. "I don't think it's for me to get into that sort of question." He has done with his bacon, eggs and mushrooms. He asks if I'd like to finish off his sausage. We swap plates. He orders another coffee and orange juice chaser, and rushes for his next cigarette. Hornby writes a column for an American magazine called the Believer. It has a wonderful format: at the beginning of each column is an inventory - on the left, the books he has bought that month, on the right, the ones he has actually read. In the magazine, co-founded by Weekend storyteller Dave Eggers (one of Hornby's fashionable younger writer friends), critics are not allowed to review books they do not like. Perfect for Hornby. His columns have just been collated into a revealing compilation called The Polysyllabic Spree. In one column, he says, "Like a lot of writers, I can't really stand my own writing." Does he mean it? He comes to a stop.

"Well, I wish I was better than I am," he says eventually. "When you've written a few, you realise that you do what you do, and then you start reading other people and you think, God, I wish I could do that, but I couldn't in a million years." Who, for instance? "Erm, errr, Dickens." That's ridiculous - there's only one Charles Dickens. Well, it's not simply that he isn't Dickens, he concedes. "No, some contemporaries ... George Saunders - it's just that he has such a weird imagination. He's really, really different. When you're at the beginning of a writing career, you feel that there are possibilities. It's like life itself ... " He seems to be sinking into a depression. "Well, I suppose everybody who writes wants it all: they want to be culty and they want to be literary and they want to be mainstream." How's he doing on the self-loathing front these days? "Yeah, I think I'm doing well on the self-loathing front." OK, how about a Hornbyesque list of the top five things he can't stand about himself. "I don't think I'm prepared to go there ...

There are plenty of things that irritate the hell out of me about myself." This is just like the Hornby of Fever Pitch, who would introduce us to his analyst and then politely close the door. It's almost lunchtime. We've been in the cafe for well over two hours. I tell Hornby that I'd better be getting off. I'm due to give a talk at a school. It's National Book Week and the school had been hoping to find a well-known author but failed, and I'm stepping in at the last minute. "Would it help if I came down with you?" Hornby asks. Would it help? Not bloody half, I say. I can sense Hornby already analysing his motives. Has he offered because he wants to come, because it would be a good thing to do, because it will create a favourable impression? When I told him earlier I'd yet to meet somebody who dislikes him, he took umbrage - oh God, not that nice Nick Hornby thing again. It's not even true, he says. "I think I am quite nice in public. I think you'd be an idiot not to be." And in private?

"I don't think I'm a nightmare in private, but I'm tetchy and unreasonable." We step on to the street, and pass a young man with a sky-high Afro. "Oh God, I was dreading this," says Hornby. "It was great when it was cool to be bald, but now hair's back in fashion." We hail a taxi and plan what we'll talk about at the school. I explain that the children have cerebral palsy, are not likely to have heard of him, and we could maybe talk about football. Isn't it depressing, I say, how football is the only language so many men can speak? "Well, there's music. Then you're bilingual, aren't you? I find it more depressing now, because football is such a huge part of popular culture in a way it wasn't when the book came out." What he means is that he hates the way the middle classes have colonised football - and he hates it even more that some people say Fever Pitch is partly to blame. I ask if he's working on any other projects.

He mentions a number of screenplays - an adaptation of a Lynn Barber memoir, a romantic comedy he's been writing for years with Emma Thompson, both of them likely to go into production shortly, and a stalled film script of Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius. At times he talks with enthusiasm about his second career as a screenwriter finally taking off, at times he seems relieved there's something he's still struggling with. We reach the school. The children take to Hornby. We talk about Arsenal and Leyton Orient and meeting Ian Wright and Thierry Henry and the music of Bob Marley, and how Hornby and Colin Firth in the film of Fever Pitch look like identical twins, except, "He made the mistake of having hair, which I always think is vulgar and rather unfashionable and cheap." We talk a bit about books. One teacher asks if he thinks it's appropriate for children to study Shakespeare as part of the national curriculum. Hornby's answer is the most belligerent I've heard all day. No, he says. Shakespeare is a wonderful poet, but so many pupils can't begin to understand his language, so what is the point?

When he was teaching, he says, another teacher told him to teach Macbeth by getting the children to draw pictures of witches. "I couldn't understand how that was teaching Shakespeare; that was allowing them to draw pictures of witches. I think part of the reason I became the writer I became is because of teaching in a school, and you're always looking for this stuff that is really intelligent but really simple and everyone can understand it. I always thought Of Mice And Men was such a perfect book because there's nothing not to understand, but it's still really clever and moving and complicated, but everybody understands the complication. It doesn't leave anybody out. I think that's what books should be like." We are back on the sunny street. A Long Way Down - and its surprising jauntiness - is still confusing me. I ask if he thinks his depression has changed over the years. He ums and ahs with a diffidence striking even by Hornby's standards. The thing is, he says, since he started writing this book about suicide, life has taken a considerable turn for the better. In fact, he's never been so relatively undepressed.

He's had two sons in the past two years with his film producer partner Amanda Posey (whom he met when they were making the Fever Pitch movie), Danny gets on well with them, he still gets on with Danny's mother, the new book's coming out, and he knows it's tempting fate, but he's not so sure that he's even depressed any more. "Erm ... the last few years have been good. With the two babies, it's been so uncomplicated in a way it wasn't with Danny. That's been fantastic. Football's been good. I'm really happy in my work. I have a very unmiserable partner. She's done me a lot of good, because she's not unrealistic in her uppishness." He's getting carried away on a tidal wave of optimism. "I wouldn't call it depression now. It's just a sort of strain of English miserablism, where you know everything is crap and everyone who pretends it isn't is kidding themselves. Yeah, this is the best it will ever get." And he looks at me, terrified, as if he's just sold his soul to the devil

Question: Which Nick Hornby book concerned his being a fan of Arsenal?
Answer: Fever Pitch