Nick Hornby is the author of High Fidelity, About a Boy, and other novels of early-21st-century British manhood. Hornby's first book, Fever Pitch (1992), described his obsession with the football team Arsenal, and made him a literary star in the United Kingdom. His subsequent novels, High Fidelity (1995) and About a Boy (1998), sealed his reputation worldwide as a crafty observer (and sometime victim) of pop music and pop culture. In addition to his novels, Hornby has written non-fiction for magazines, including pop music criticism for The New Yorker. Hornby's books have also been made into successful movies: Fever Pitch (1997) starred Colin Firth, High Fidelity (2002) was relocated from England to the United States and starred John Cusack and About a Boy (2002) starred Hugh Grant. His other books include How to Be Good (2001), Long Way Down (2005) and the musical reverie 31 Songs (2003).
Fever Pitch was also remade in the U.S. as a 2005 film starring Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore, with baseball's Boston Red Sox replacing the Arsenal Gunners as the team in question... Hornby's son Danny (b. 1993) is autistic, and in 1997 Hornby co-founded TreeHouse, an educational charity for children with autism.
Career Highlights: About a Boy, Fever Pitch, Fever Pitch
First Major Screen Credit: Fever Pitch (1997)
Biography
Nicknamed by journalists as "the maestro of the male confessional," author Nick Hornby initially gained popularity through the troubled male protagonists of his first three novels -- Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, About a Boy -- and their eventual film adaptations. Yet, with the female narrator of his fourth book, How to Be Good, and his screenwriting partnership with Emma Thompson, he proved that his pop sensibilities -- Hornby is known for his references to popular culture, especially sports and music -- are not gender specific.
Born on April 17, 1957 in Maidenhead, England, Hornby is the son of businessman Sir Derek Hornby. When the younger Hornby was 11 years old, his parents divorced and his father began taking him to watch the North London Premier League club Arsenal during their visits. He ultimately developed into a loyal, and somewhat irrational, fan of the team. Hornby also became a dedicated reader, absorbing everything from comic books to Lorrie Moore. As an English Literature major at Cambridge University, he began composing stage plays, screenplays, and radio plays in his spare time. A professor then introduced Hornby to novelist Anne Tyler's Dinner at a Homesick Restaurant, which inspired him to write prose.
After graduating, Hornby worked a series of jobs -- he taught grade school, gave language classes, and served as host for Samsung executives visiting the U.K. -- before becoming a paid journalist. He composed a pop culture column for the Independent, and wrote about books and sports for publications like Esquire and the Sunday Times. In 1992, he published his first book, Contemporary American Fiction, a collection of essays on American writers such as Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver, and Tobias Wolff. That same year, he released Fever Pitch, a memoir about being a devoted (and irrational) Arsenal fan since childhood. The work was a surprise hit, earning countless acclaim and selling out copies years into its release.
Hornby finished his first novel, High Fidelity, in 1995. The story of a record shop owner whose only lasting relationship is with pop music, High Fidelity earned accolades for both its compassion and its flippant refusal to compromise itself for political correctness. Hornby followed its success with the screen adaptation of Fever Pitch (1997), a four-star dramatic comedy starring Colin Firth as a schoolteacher struggling to sustain a romance against the backdrop of Arsenal's first championship season in 18 years. He also made a cameo appearance in the film.
In 1998, Hornby published About a Boy, a novel inspired in part by the children (especially the badly behaved adolescent girls) that he encountered as a teacher. The story follows Will, an immature single man, and Marcus, a struggling preadolescent, as they grow up together. His most favorably reviewed book to date, About a Boy, helped its author earn the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999.
Unlike with Fever Pitch, Hornby did not pen the film adaptations of High Fidelity and About a Boy. Co-written by its star John Cusack and helmed by legendary British director Stephen Frears, High Fidelity opened in 2000 to rave reviews and ended the year on many top ten lists. Despite having its setting transplanted from London to Chicago, the film still owed much of its success to its source material. About a Boy faired even better -- after buying the rights to the book for nearly three million dollars, Robert De Niro's Tribeca Films and Working Title commissioned What's Eating Gilbert Grape creator Peter Hedges to draft the screenplay. The film went into production under the direction of brothers Chris and Paul Weitz with Hugh Grant and Nicholas Hoult in the lead roles and Hornby as an executive producer. Released in 2002, critics hailed About a Boy as the best Hornby adaptation to date.
While enjoying his big-screen success, Hornby published How to Be Good, which earned him Britain's prestigious W.H. Smith Fiction Award in 2002. He also began working on several screenplays, including a collaboration with Academy Award-winning writer Emma Thompson. He continues to contribute to Time Out, the Sunday Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and is the pop music reviewer for the New Yorker. The parents of an autistic son, Hornby and his ex-wife founded TreeHouse, a school for autistic children in London. In 2000, he edited a collection of short stories entitled Speaking With the Angel to raise funds for the school. The book includes writings by Colin Firth, Irvine Welsh, and Helen Fielding. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide
Hornby graduated from Cambridge University with a 2.2 in English
Literature.[1] He taught English to foreign students and
also worked as a journalist before turning to writing. In 1993 Hornby's son Danny was born with autism. His son's disorder led him to become a co-founder of TreeHouse, an organization to which he contributed much of the profits from Speaking with the
Angel. In 1998 Hornby's marriage with Virginia Bovell collapsed and they later divorced. Hornby lives in Maidenhead, England.
His third novel, About a Boy, published in 1998, is
about two "boys" -- Marcus, an awkward yet endearing adolescent from a single parent family, and the free floating, mid-30s Will
Freeman who overcomes his own immaturity and self-centeredness through his growing relationship with Marcus. Hugh Grant starred in the 2002 movie version. In 1999 Hornby received the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
The novel How to Be Good was published in 2001. The female protagonist in the
novel explores contemporary morals, marriage and parenthood. It won the WH Smith Award for
Fiction in 2002. A part of the money he earned with his next book Speaking
with the Angel in 2002 was donated to TreeHouse, a charity for autistic children. He was editor of the
book, which contained twelve short stories written by his friends. He also contributed to the collection with the story
"NippleJesus."[2] In 2003
Hornby wrote a collection of essays on selected popular songs and the emotional resonance they carry, called 31 Songs (known in the United States as Songbook). Also in
2003, Hornby was awarded the London Award 2003, an award that was selected by fellow writers.[3]
Hornby has also written essays on various aspects of popular culture, and in particular he has become known for his writing on
pop music and mix tape enthusiasts. He also began writing a book review column, "Stuff I've Been
Reading," for the monthly magazine The Believer; several of these articles are
collected in The Polysyllabic Spree (2004)
and Housekeeping vs. The Dirt (2006).
Hornby's novel A Long Way Down was published in 2005. It was on the shortlist
for the Whitbread Novel Award. Hornby has also edited two sports-related anthologies:
My Favourite Year and The Picador Book of Sports Writing.
Hornby's newest book, due out on October 16, 2007, is a
young adult novel entitled Slam. Slam is about a 15-year-old skateboarder named Sam whose life changes drastically
when his girlfriend gets pregnant.
It has also been rumoured that he has been writing a movie with Emma Thompson.
Adaptations
Film
Several of Hornby's books have made the jump from page to screen. Hornby wrote the screenplay for the first, a 1997 British
adaptation of Fever Pitch, starring Colin
Firth. It was followed in 2000 by High Fidelity, starring
John Cusack; this adaptation was notable in that the action was shifted from
London to Chicago. After this
success, About a Boy was quickly picked up, and released in 2002, starring
Hugh Grant. An AmericanizedFever Pitch, in which Jimmy Fallon plays a hopelessly
addicted Boston Red Sox fan who tries to reconcile his love of the game with that of his
girlfriend (Drew Barrymore), was released in 2005. It appears likely that A Long Way
Down will also be adapted; Johnny Depp purchased film rights to the book before it was
published.
Stage
High Fidelity was also the basis for a 2006musical, which shifted the action to Brooklyn; its book is by
David Lindsay-Abaire, with lyrics by Amanda
Green and music by Tom Kitt. The production ran for a month in Boston, then moved to Broadway, closing after 18
previews and 14 regular performances.
Music
The importance of music in Hornby's novels, and in his life, is evidenced by his long-standing and fruitful collaborations
with the rock band Marah, fronted by Dave and Serge Bielanko. Hornby has even toured in the
USA and Europe with the band, joining them on stage to read his own essays about particular moments and performers in his own
musical history which have had a particular meaning for him. The band typically follows each of Hornby's essays, about subjects
including Bob Marley, Rory Gallagher and
The Clash, by playing a song by each of those artists.
Hornby and Marah (whose small but intensely dedicated band of fans also includes Stephen
King and Bruce Springsteen) have worked together on this project over time, and
together put on a show of all the essays and songs, concluding with his essay about Marah themselves, and followed by a full
concert of the band's own songs[citation needed].
One of the main characters in Hornby's A Long Way Down, a down on his luck rock singer delivering pizzas in north
London and considering suicide on the last day of 1999, is widely supposed to have been inspired by Serge Bielanko's own
experiences in London.
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