Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby is a prominent English novelist and screenwriter known for his relatable and often humorous explorations of contemporary life. Born in Highbury, London, he emerged as a key figure in British fiction during the 1990s and early 2000s. His early experiences, including his parents’ divorce and his father’s lifestyle, shaped his interests in pop music and football, which feature prominently in his work. Hornby gained widespread recognition with his memoir, *Fever Pitch* (1992), and later achieved acclaim for novels like *High Fidelity* (1995) and *About a Boy* (1998).
His writing is characterized by a focus on ordinary, often neurotically obsessive characters navigating the complexities of modern life. Influenced by American authors known for their gritty realism, Hornby has carved a niche that balances humor with deeper themes. He has adapted several of his novels into successful films and has also earned accolades for his screenplay adaptations of other works, including *An Education* and *Brooklyn*, both of which garnered Oscar nominations. Hornby continues to engage with diverse perspectives in his writing, including experimenting with female narrators in some of his works. His literary career reflects a blend of popular appeal and critical recognition, making him a significant voice in contemporary literature.
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Nick Hornby
Writer
- Born: April 17, 1957
- Place of Birth: Redhill, Surrey, England
ENGLISH NOVELIST
Biography
Nick Hornby has come to define a certain populist strain in British fiction in the 1990s and at the turn of the millennium. He was born in Highbury in suburban north London, where he continued to live and which provided the settings for his books. His parents divorced when he was a boy; his mother’s relative poverty and his father’s more affluent lifestyle in France with his second family affected Hornby’s choice of friends and pastimes, including collecting pop music and watching football (soccer). The latter, which began as a way of forging a relationship with his father during his infrequent visits, became a lifelong obsession, as described in his memoir Fever Pitch (1992). Hornby graduated from Cambridge with an English degree, then worked as a teacher and journalist, contributing to magazines such as Esquire, GQ, Elle, Time, Vogue, and The New Republic. He also served as the pop music critic for The New Yorker; his fascination with music formed the basis of his first novel, High Fidelity (1995). Hornby edited the short-story anthology Speaking with the Angel (2000) as a fund-raising project in support of children with autism (he has a son with autism, Danny, from his first marriage).
Hornby’s aesthetic principles can be gleaned from his critical text and first book, Contemporary American Fiction (1992), in which he makes clear his admiration for American writers such as Raymond Carver, Bobbie Ann Mason, Richard Ford, and Tobias Wolff, known as “dirty realists” for their gritty, working-class characters and settings as well as their plain, unadorned language. In interviews, Hornby openly acknowledged these writers, in addition to other Americans such as Lorrie Moore and Anne Tyler and the Irish writer Roddy Doyle, as his primary influences. While he gravitated toward the style of certain American writers, he distanced himself from his contemporaries in the world of British fiction, whom he rejected as too clever and erudite, writing what he once called “difficult, dark, inaccessible” fiction about “huge things in history” while ignoring quotidian life. He considered himself outside the “little literary circle in Britain” made up of authors routinely nominated for the Booker Prize. In 1999, though never having had work considered for the Booker, he did receive the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Hornby embraced descriptions of his work as being “domestic” tales about ordinary people going about their everyday business, including indulging in popular culture. His characters frequently border on being neurotically obsessive and self-absorbed—but in a comic mode; Hornby accepted the label of “comedy of depression” as appropriate for his writing. He tried to hone his aesthetic style with each successive novel, making it more sophisticated without losing its populist edge. In an interview, he claimed: “I think the process generally is to try and get darker and funnier as much as I possibly can.” In response to criticisms that his fiction is too centered on a narrowly male perspective, particularly that of men trapped in adolescent fantasies well into adulthood, Hornby countered that he believed that contemporary men and women lead “very similar lives” and that his writing transcended gender distinctions. Also, in How to Be Good, he experimented with a different point of view by creating a woman narrator. Some of Hornby's other significant titles include About a Boy (1998), Juliet, Naked (2010), Funny Girl (2015), State of the Union (2019), Just Like You (2020), and Dickens and Prince (2022). Hornby has also written several nonfiction books and essay collections, many dealing with his music and reading tastes.
Hornby's books alone have proven to have significant popular appeal, but they have also translated well into films. John Cusack starred in an American film version of High Fidelity in 2000. Hornby wrote the screenplay for a 1997 British adaptation of Fever Pitch, which starred Colin Firth. An Americanized version of Fever Pitch and starring Jimmy Fallon was adapted a few years later. In 2002, About a Boy was also adapted for film starring Hugh Grant. (Translated into an American television series about a decade later.) Hornby had great success as a second career, adapting other writers' books into movies. First, he adapted Lynn Barber's essay into the 2009 film An Education, for which he was nominated for an Oscar for best-adapted screenplay. He adapted Cheryl Strayed memoir Wild into an Oscar-nominated film of the same title starring Reese Witherspoon. Hornby was again nominated for an Oscar a year later for the script of Brooklyn, adapted from the Colm Tóibín novel.
Hornby was married to his first wife, Virginia Bovell, until 1998. Together, they had one son, Danny. Hornby met his second wife, producer Amanda Posey, on the British Fever Pitch set. Though the date is not readily available, the couple married sometime after 1998 and have two sons.
Bibliography
Berkowitz, Joe. "The 'Wild' Journey of Nick Hornby, from Author to Oscar-Nominated Screenwriter." Co.Create. Mansueto Ventures, 10 Dec. 2014.
Grtiz, Jennie Rothenberg. "How Nick Hornby Keeps His Writing Fresh." Atlantic, 30 Jan. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/01/nick-hornby-interview/384959. Accessed 20 July 2024.
King, Chris Savage. “All the Lonely People.” New Statesman and Society, April 14, 1995: 47-48.
Madsen, Deborah L. Review of Contemporary American Fiction, by Nick Hornby. Modern Language Review 89, no. 4 (1994): 991-992.
"Nick Hornby." British Council: Literature. British Council, literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/nick-hornby. Accessed 20 July 2024.
O’Toole, Lawrence. “Fever Pitch: Football and Obsession.” New Statesman and Society, October 2, 1992, 40-41.
Watts, Charles. "'I Hoped Fans Would Recognise Themselves in It' - Why Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch Remains as Popular as Ever." Goal, 20 May 2022, www.goal.com/en-us/news/nick-hornby-fever-pitch-popular-as-ever/blteb3618c00facd29c. Accessed 20 July 2024.