I've always wanted to read Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity, and last week I finally did. Although I saw the movie first, I ended up preferring the book. Truth be told, I couldn't get through the movie, which is rare for me. I fell asleep and woke up thinking, oh, John Cusack's still whining. Time to switch to Curb Your Enthusiasm! You know. For an entirely different kind of, albeit more entertaining, whining.
High Fidelity, for those who don't know, is the first-person account of a newly-dumped, music-obsessed, thirty-five-year-old manchild named Rob who owns a struggling record store in the '90s. Rob spends most of his time with his two Championship Vinyl employees, dudes who are even more hopeless than he is, making fun of people who like bubblegum pop and creating top five lists of their favorite songs, albums, and Cheers episodes. So in an effort to pinpoint how and when his love life went wrong, Rob describes his top five failed relationships in excruciating detail, casting his exes as the villains. If this whole commitmentphobe-guy-in-his-thirties-who-loves-music-more-than-he-loves-love thing sounds like Tom Perrotta's The Wishbones, then that's because it is. Only British and broodier -- and, to be fair, published three years earlier.
As the story unravels, Hornby hints that Rob is an unreliable narrator, slowly acquainting us with all the reasons why these breakups may actually be his fault. Getting to know Rob and his problems requires going on a journey with not only this one very specific and very self-absorbed man, but with men in general. According to Rob, men don't expect women to look perfect or even to deliver mind-blowing sex. It's just that they can't shake the thrill of meeting (and yes, sleeping with) a new woman every so often. In other words, Rob is exasperating -- but he's also human. And through Hornby's satiric yet sensitive eyes, he sometimes becomes sympathetic.
It should come as no surprise, then, that despite my distaste for Rob's misogynistic behavior, there's a part of me that still kind of gets him. Not the thing about wanting to play the field, but the thing about not wanting to lose his independence. Because for him, independence is music. It's the language that helps him understand the world, and I respect what it means to him:
" . . . sentimental music has this great way of taking you back somewhere at the same time that it takes you forward, so you feel nostalgic and hopeful all at the same time." 63
So true, Rob/Hornby, so true. The best songs defy space and time, transporting us to a place where everything's possible. And that, in a nutshell, describes Rob's dilemma: he's a guy who, like most of us, wants it all. So he gives up what he's got for what he might get. But it doesn't make him happy. Will he ever be able to sacrifice the possibility of the polygamous past for the certainty of a monogamous future?
Probably (no spoiler here; you know how these stories go). Because music will always sound sweeter coming from a record player than a computer -- but you're never too old to grow up.