Nick Hornby: The Gift of Good Fiction

"What I’ve always loved about fiction is its ability to be smart about people who aren’t themselves smart, or at least don’t necessarily have the resources to describe their own emotional states. That was the way Twain was smart, and Dickens; and that is surely one of the reasons why Roddy Doyle is adored by all sorts of people, many of whom are infrequent book-buyers. It seems to me to be a more remarkable gift than the ability to let extremely literate people say extremely literate things."

Nick Hornby, The Complete Polysyllabic Spree, London: Viking, 2006. 161-162. A review of this book can be found at Reviewing 'The Complete Polysyllabic Spree' by Nick Hornby.

Image: “One of the reasons why Roddy Doyle is adored by all sorts of people…”

Geoff Pound

Nick Hornby: ‘Books and Stories Should be Enjoyable’

Author, Nick Hornby calls for people to be urged to read interesting books and hear stories that are enjoyable rather than a grind:

“In Britain, more than 12 million adults have a reading age of thirteen or under, and yet some clever dick journalist still insists on telling us that unless we’re reading something proper, then we might as well not bother at all. But what’s proper? Which books will make us more intelligent? Who has got the right stuff?

Source: Nick Hornby, The Complete Polysyllabic Spree, London: Viking, 2006, 6.

A review of The Complete Polysyllabic Spree can be found at my site, Reviewing Books and Movies.

Geoff Pound

Image: Nick Hornby.

Keep Boring Your Listeners

Writer Nick Hornby tells how he became a reader and, implicitly, how he became a writer:

“When I was nine years old, I spent a few unhappy months in a church choir (my mum’s idea, not mine). And two or three times a week, I had to sit through the sermon delivered by an insufferable old windbag of a vicar. I thought it would last for ever, and sometimes I thought it would kill me—that I would, quite literally, die of boredom.”

“The only thing we were allowed for diversion was the hymn-book, and I even ended up reading it, sometimes. Books and comics had never seemed so necessary; even though I’d always enjoyed reading before then, I’d never understood it to be so desperately important for my sanity.”

“I’ve never, ever gone anywhere without a book or a magazine since.”

If you are a public speaker, a vicar or a preacher, keep boring your listeners. Heaven knows how we need more entertaining writers like Nick Hornby.

Nick Hornby, The Complete Polysyllabic Spree, London: Viking, 2006, 8-9.

Image: Nick Hornby