The Complete Polysyllabic Spree

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The Complete Polysyllabic Spree Page 25

by Nick Hornby

It would be easy, if unfair, to parody the post-Gladwell school of essays (and it’s not unfair to say that The Tipping Point and Blink both paved the way for Freakonomics). You take two dissimilar things, prove – to your own satisfaction, at least – that they are not only not dissimilar but in fact more or less indistinguishable, suddenly cut away to provide some historical context, and then explain what it all means to us in our daily lives. So it goes something like this:

  On the face of it, World War II and Pamela Anderson’s breasts would seem to have very little in common. And yet on closer examination, the differences seem actually much less interesting than the similarities. Just as World War II has to be seen in the context of the Great War that preceded it, it’s not possible to think about Pammie’s left breast without also thinking about her right. Pamela Anderson’s breasts, like World War II, have both inspired reams of comment and analysis, and occupied an arguably disproportionate amount of the popular imagination (in a survey conducted by the American Bureau of Statistical Analysis, more than 67 per cent of men aged between thirty-five and fifty admitted to thinking about both World War II and what Anderson has under her T-shirt ‘more than once a year’); both World War II and the Anderson chest are becoming less au courant than they were. There are other, newer wars to fight; there are other, younger breasts to look at. What does all this tell us about our status as humans in the early years of the twenty-first century? To find out, we have to go back to the day in 1529 when Sir Thomas More reluctantly replaced Cardinal Wolsey as Lord Chancellor in Henry VIII’s court…

  They’re always fun to read (the real essays, I mean, not my parody, which was merely fun to write, and a waste of your time). They pep you up, make you feel smart but a little giddy, occasionally make you laugh. Freakonomics occasionally hits you a little too hard over the head with a sense of its own ingenuity. ‘Now for another unlikely question: what did crack cocaine have in common with nylon stockings?’ (One of the things they shared, apparently, is that they were both addictive, although silk stockings were only ‘practically’ addictive, which might explain why there are comparatively few silk-stocking-related drive-by shootings.) The answer to the question of whether mankind is innately and universally corrupt ‘may lie in… bagels’. (The dots here do not represent an ellipsis, but a kind of trumpeting noise.) Schoolteachers are like sumo wrestlers, real-estate agents are like the Ku Klux Klan, and so on. I enjoyed the book, which is really a collection of statistical conjuring tricks, but I wasn’t entirely sure of what it was about.

  I don’t think I have ever had so many books I wanted to read. I picked up a few things in US bookstores; I was given a load of cool-looking books by interesting writers when I was in Mississippi and ordered one or two more (Larry Brown’s On Fire, for example) when I came home. Meanwhile I still want to go back to L. P. Hartley’s Eustace and Hilda trilogy, but Hartley seems too English at the moment. And I have a proof copy of the new Anne Tyler, and this young English writer David Peace has written a novel about 1974 as seen through the prism of Brian Clough’s disastrous spell in charge at Leeds United. (Brian Clough was… Leeds United were… Oh, never mind.) So I’d better push on.

  Except… a long time ago, I used to mention Arsenal, the football team I have supported for thirty-eight years, in these pages. Arsenal was occasionally called in to provide an excuse for why I hadn’t read as much as I wanted to, but up until a month or so ago, they were rubbish, and I couldn’t use them as an excuse for anything. They weren’t even an excuse for a football team. Anyway, now they’re – we’ re – good again. We have the semifinals of the Champions League coming up in a couple of weeks, for the first time in my life, and I can see books being moved on to the bench for the next few weeks. Ah, the old dilemma: books versus rubbish. (Or maybe, books versus stuff that can sometimes seem more fun than books.) It’s good to have it back.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to: Andrew Leland, Vendela Vida, Heidi Julavits and the Spree, Charlotte Moore, Tony Hoagland, Zelda Turner, Tony Lacey, Joanna Prior, Rosie Gailer and Caroline Dawnay.

  Thanks also to Dave and Serge Bielanko, Nick Coleman, Sarah Vowell, DV DeVincentis, Wesley Stace, Harry Ritchie, Tony Quinn, Rachel Cooke, Eli Horowitz, Gill Hornby, Robert Harris and everyone else who has recommended a book to me.

  Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material. A selection from Charlotte Moore ’s George and Sam: Autism in the Family appears courtesy of Viking Penguin. Tony Hoagland ’s ‘Impossible Dream ’ from What Narcissism Means to Me, published by Graywolf Press, appears courtesy of the author. A selection from Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky appears courtesy of the estate of Patrick Hamilton. A selection from Anton Chekhov ’s A Life in Letters, translated by Rosamund Bartlett and Anthony Phillips, appears courtesy of Penguin. A selection from Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation appears courtesy of Simon & Schuster. A selection from Jess Walter’s Citizen Vince appears courtesy of Hodder & Stoughton. A selection from Jennie Erdal’s Ghosting appears courtesy of Canongate. A selection from Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End appears courtesy of Little, Brown & Co. and Penguin. A selection from Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis appears courtesy of Jonathan Cape.

  INDEX OF STUFF HE’S BEEN READING

  Adams, Tim

  Being John McEnroe 20–1

  Amis, Martin 115

  Experience 95

  anonymous

  unnameable comedy thriller 216–17

  Arnott, Jake

  The Long Firm 69

  Atkinson, Kate

  Case Histories 163, 173

  Bailey, Blake

  A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Works of Richard Yates 25, 29, 120

  Bainbridge, Beryl

  Master Georgie 32

  Bank, Melissa

  The Wonder Spot 180–1

  Banks, Iain M. 176

  Excession 175–7

  Barthelme, Donald 59, 244–5

  Sixty Stories 47, 50

  Barthes, Roland

  S/Z 140

  Bartram, Simon

  The Man on the Moon 152–3

  Baxter, Charles 37

  Feast of Love 11–12

  Bernanos, Georges

  The Diary of a Country Priest 197

  Buchan, John 55, 227

  Greenmantle 61

  Callender, Craig and Ralph Edney

  Introducing Time 53–4

  Capote, Truman

  In Cold Blood 171–2

  Carey, John 226

  What Good Are the Arts? 217–18, 225–6

  Cercas, Javier

  Soldiers of Salamis 145

  Chabon, Michael 97

  Chang, Jung

  Wild Swans 256

  Chekhov, Anton 129–30

  The Essential Tales of Chekhov 130–2

  A Life in Letters 122, 135–8

  Chesterton, G. K.

  The Man Who Was Thursday 226

  Clowes, Daniel

  David Boring 98–9

  Coake, Chris 113–17

  We’re in Trouble 114

  Coe, Jonathan

  Like a Fiery Elephant 102–3, 106–8

  Coetzee, J. M. 71–2

  Collin, Matthew

  This is Serbia Calling 97–8

  Collins, Paul

  Not Even Wrong 61–2,65

  Collins, Wilkie 35–6

  No Name 31, 32, 35–7,42

  Connolly, Cyril

  Enemies of Promise 47–50

  Connolly, Michael

  The Poet 243–4

  Conroy, Frank 21, 23

  Stop-Time 20, 23

  Cooper, William 232, 243

  Scenes from Life 231–2

  Scenes from Metropolitan Life 232, 233

  Scenes from Provincial Life 232–3

  Corso, Gregory ‘Marriage’ 14

  Denby, David 104

  American Sucker 63

  Dexter, Pete

  The Paperboy 94–5
r />   Train 93–5,96

  Dickens, Charles 6–7,16, 25,36, 37, 72–3, 96, 115, 162

  Bleak House 23, 77

  David Copperfield 55, 69, 73–8,79–81,88, 94, 116, 147–227

  Great Expectations 77, 96

  Hard Times 108

  The Old Curiosity Shop 56, 74, 75

  Doctorow, E. L.

  The March 268, 270–1

  Dornstein, Ken

  The Boy Who Fell from the Sky 268, 268–70

  Dostoevsky, Fyodor

  Crime and Punishment 28, 56

  Doyle, Roddy 127, 133–2,162

  Oh, Play That Thing 133

  A Star Called Henry 133

  Dylan, Bob

  Chronicles: Volume One 140–2,173

  Edmonds, David and John Eidinow

  Bobby Fischer Goes to War 88–90

  Ehrhart, W. D.

  Vietnam-Perkasie 58

  Eliot, George 14, 15

  Daniel Deronda 140

  Middlemarch 56

  Erdal, Jennie

  Ghosting 230–1, 234–7

  Ferris, Joshua

  Then We Came to the End 244–5, 246–50

  Flaubert, Gustave

  Collected Letters 58–9

  Flynn, Nick

  Another Bullshit Night in Suck City 164–5,181

  Fox, Paula

  Desperate Characters 24

  Frayn, Michael

  Spies 187

  Towards the End of the Morning 165

  The Trick of It 211–13

  Gosse, Edmund

  Father and Son 119–20

  Gourevitch, Philip

  A Cold Case 169–72

  Guralnick, Peter 23, 85

  Feel Like Going Home 23

  Haddon, Mark

  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 64–7

  Hamilton, Ian 13–14, 29

  Against Oblivion: Some Lives of the 20th-Century Poets 14, 15

  Robert Lowell A Biography 116

  In Search of J. D. Salinger 13

  Hamilton, Patrick 64, 114

  Hangover Square 67–8, 114–15, 116, 120–1, 122

  The Midnight Bell 115, 120–1

  Rope 121

  The Siege of Pleasure 121–2

  Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky 114, 121, 124–6

  Harris, John

  So Now Who Do We Vote For? 163–4

  Harris, Robert 16, 244

  as brother-in-law 12, 20, 144–5

  Fatherland 144–5

  Pompeii 16, 269–70

  Hartley, L. P.

  Eustace and Hilda 239, 240, 243

  The Shrimp and the Anemone 239–41, 243

  Heller, Joseph

  Something Happened 14, 17

  Heller, Zoë

  Notes on a Scandal 24–5

  Hendra, Tony

  Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul 145

  Hines, Barry

  A Kestrel for a Knave 168

  Hoagland, Tony 89

  What Narcissism Means to Me 84, 89, 91–2

  Hornby, Gill 186–7

  Jane Austen: The Girl With the Magic Pen 186–7

  Jenkins, Roy

  Gladstone 169

  Jones, Nigel

  Through a Glass Darkly: The Life of Patrick Hamilton 115, 120–1

  Joyce, James 33, 106–7

  Finnegans Wake 16

  Kermode, Frank

  Not Entitled 95–6

  Krakauer, Jon

  Into the Wild 267–8, 268–9

  Kurkov, Andrey 228

  Death and the Penguin 228–30

  Larkin, Philip 219–21, 224, 231, 233

  Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940–85 219–21, 224

  LeBlanc, Adrian Nicole

  Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx 84–8, 116

  Lehane, Dennis

  Mystic River 102–5, 108, 116

  Prayers for Rain 102–4, 105

  Lessing, Doris 115

  Lethem, Jonathan 21–2, 74

  The Fortress of Solitude 20–4, 116

  Levin, Bernard

  The Pendulum Years 257–8

  Levitt, Steve D. and Dubner, Stephen J.

  Freakonomics 267, 271–2

  Lewis, Jeremy

  Penguin Special 188

  Lewis, Michael

  Liar’s Poker 60–1

  Moneyball 38–9, 42, 60, 116

  Lincoln, Abraham 271

  Linson, Art

  What Just Happened? 53

  Lippman, Laura

  Every Secret Thing 148–9

  Lowell, Robert 13–15, 17, 29, 116

  Collected Poems 13, 15

  Lukacs, John

  Five Days in London 223–5

  MacDonald, Ian

  The People’s Music 23

  McEwan, Ian 162, 163

  Saturday 161–3

  Malcolm, Janet

  Reading Chekhov: A Critical Journey 130–3

  Marcus, Greil

  Like a Rolling Stone 173–4

  Masters, Alexander

  Stuart: A Life Backwards 181

  Meloy, Maile

  Liars and Saints 117–18

  Mitford, Nancy

  Noblesse Oblige 187

  Mnookin, Seth 188–9

  Hard News 189

  Moore, Charlotte

  George and Sam: Autism in the Family 39–45, 61, 65, 116

  Mosley, Walter

  Little Scarlett 188

  Mötley Crüe

  The Dirt 239–43, 245

  Neate, Patrick

  Where You’re At 23

  Ondaatje, Michael

  Running in the Family 252–3

  Orringer, Julie

  How to Breathe Underwater 31–2, 116

  Oz, Amos

  Help Us to Divorce 153

  Paterson, Don

  The Book of Shadows 145–6

  Pernice, Joe 52

  Meat is Murder 52–3

  Perrotta, Tom

  Little Children 145

  Platt, Edward

  Leadville 32

  Price, Richard 53

  Clockers 53, 116

  Pynchon, Thomas

  Gravity’s Rainbow 140

  Rees, Jasper

  Wenger: The Making of a Legend 30, 33

  Ricks, Christopher

  Dylan’s Visions of Sin 132–3

  Ridley, Matt

  Genome 32–3, 33

  Riley, Gillian 26, 62

  How to Stop Smoking and Stay Stopped for Good 26, 62

  Quitting Smoking – The Lazy Person’s Guide! 26

  Robinson, Marilynne

  Gilead 184–6, 213

  Housekeeping 213–16

  Ronson, Jon

  The Men Who Stare at Goats 177, 179–80

  Rosoff, Meg 117–20

  How I Live Now 117–20

  Roth, Philip

  The Plot Against America 140, 142–5

  Rothman, Rodney

  Early Bird 150–1

  Sacco, Joe

  Safe Area Gorazde 97–8

  Salinger, J. D. 15–16, 20–1, 23

  Catcher in the Rye 23

  Franny and Zooey 12

  Nine Stories 13, 16

  Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters/Seymour: An Introduction 13, 16, 20, 21

  Salzman, Mark 38, 68–9

  True Notebooks 68–9, 116

  Satrapi, Marjane

  Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood 256–7, 259–66, 267

  Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return 256–7, 267

  Al-Shaykh, Hanan

  Only in London 221–2

  Shone, Tom 112–13

  Blockbuster 111–13

  Smith, Andrew

  Moondust 244, 253–5

  Smith, Ed 128–9

  On and Off the Field 128–9

  Smith, Zadie 97

  On Beauty 221

  Thomas, Dylan 141

  Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters 122–3


  Toews, Miriam

  A Complicated Kindness 195–6

  Tolkien, J. R. R. 33, 121

  The Lord of the Rings 121

  Tomalin, Claire 97

  The Invisible Woman 96–7, 99

  Townsend, Sue

  Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction 177–9

  Truss, Lynne 52

  Eats, Shoots and Leaves 51–2

  Twain, Mark 162

  Tyler, Anne

  The Amateur Marriage 187–8

  Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant 187

  Tyson, Timothy B.

  Blood Done Sign My Name 207–8

  Updike, John

  Rabbit, Run 56

  Vaughan, Guerra and Chadwick Marzan Jr. Y: The Last Man Vols 1–3 98, 99

  Voltaire

  Candide 204–6, 212

  Vonnegut, Kurt 42, 255–6

  A Man Without a Country 255–6, 267

  The Sirens of Titan 37, 41–2, 116, 268

  Vowell, Sarah 149–51, 171

  Assassination Vacation 149–50, 154–7

  Take the Cannoli 143

  Walter, Jess

  Citizen Vince 194–5, 198–202, 216

  Over Tumbled Graves 216

  Ward, Amanda Eyre

  How to Be Lost 172–3

  Warren, Robert Penn

  All the King’s Men 222–3

  Wheen, Francis 59–61

  How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World 59–61

  Wilsey, Sean

  Oh the Glory of It All 206–7

  Wolff, Tobias

  In Pharaoh’s Army 51

  Old School 51

  This Boy’s Life 23, 51, 119

  Woodward, Bob

  Bush at War 33

  Worrall, Simon

  The Poet and the Murderer 32

  Yates, Richard 25, 29–30, 32, 120

  Revolutionary Road 25–6, 29

  Zaid, Gabriel

  So Many Books 122

  Zanes, Warren

  Dusty in Memphis 52–3

  Zuckerman, Nathan

  Diary 118

  1 I bought so many books this month it’s obscene, and I’m not owning up to them all: this is a selection. And to be honest, I’ve been economical with the truth for months now. I keep finding books that I bought, didn’t read and didn’t list.

  2 [We do indeed pay Nick Hornby to write his monthly column, but we didn’t pay him to mention McSweeney’s 13. – Ed.]

 

 

 


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