"The Polysyllabic Spree"

[fiefoe]

Nick Hornby's non-fiction writing is always vastly personable. He carries on just as though to a good mate, trusts one with his flights of fancy, and occasionally even lets you get a word in edgewise - even though it might only be 'Me too!'

In "Fever Pitch", he won me over on the first page by confessing that 90% of the time, his first coherent thought upon waking up is highlights from some imagined or past Arsenal game. Here, he got my head nodding by saying that when reading is going well, one book leads to another and to another, (a daisy-chain of books, I'd call it, but he might be too manly for this kind of metaphor.) (Conversely, he says when it's going badly, 'your mood and the mood of the book are fighting like cats.') Nothing earth-shattering here, but the sentiments ring true, and are conveyed by someone whose enthusiasm for his subject is all too infectious.

On Salinger: 'The realization that you could polish off a major author's entire oeuvre in less than a week was (appealing) - you won't catch Dickens being pushed around like that.'

On Jonathan Lethem / "The Fortress of Solitude": 'flaws that come of ambition, not of ineptitude'  {Compare this with "Debt to Pleasure" on da Vinci - 'incarnate hero of the principle of incompletion, of failure through excessive talent'. }