Saturday, October 20, 2007

Nick Hornby on Growing Up and Developing a Critical Faculty

“A critical faculty is a terrible thing.”

“When I was eleven there were no bad films, just films that I didn’t want to see, there was no bad food, just Brussel sprouts and cabbage, and there were no bad books—everything that I read was great.”

“Then suddenly, I woke up in the morning and all that had changed. How could my sister not hear that David Cassidy was not in the same class as Black Sabbath? Why on earth would my English teacher think that The History of Mr. Polly was better than Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie?”

“And from that moment on, enjoyment has been a much more elusive quality.”

Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch (London: Victor Gollancz, 1992), 29.

Image: “there was no bad food, just Brussel sprouts and cabbage…”