One of the central elements of Nick Hornby’s work has been the tension between different kinds of art – those elements contain a very postmodern clash between tangential valorizations. A prime example is Hornby’s “Nipple Jesus,” where the protagonist is the spokesperson for a view of high (museum) art as for other people, while he goes home to watch television. Hornby often uses this middle-class sensibility, which includes references to popular culture, as a major component in his work.
Hornby’s 1998 About a Boy lays out the conflict between the high and popular art through two narrators, Will and Marcus. With the addition of Fiona, Marcus’s mother, Marcus becomes the mediator between their sensibilities, sense of taste, and their conflicting notions of art.
The most easily seen aspect of this conflict is television. Both households watch the game show Countdown. Another TV reference is Will’s watching Saved By the Bell, a mass audience sitcom that Fiona will not allow on their telly.
Television is not the only point of conflict, though, because Hornby also returns, like High Fidelity, to the knowledge of music. Will’s CD collection is a huge part of his character, in a carryover from High Fidelity, at least as described by Marcus. It is one of the traits that impresses him about Will. In fact, both identify Will’s knowledge of 90s pop music, including Nirvana, as part of his importance at various points in the novel.
Fiona, on the other hand, seems stuck in the Joni Mitchell era.
About a Boy is really about Will’s development, but a big part of Hornby’s short-hand in developing characters is through his use of TV and music. It is postmodernist in its representation of tangential valorizations.
About the presenterSteve Hicks
I am an English professor at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania with a Ph.D. from Catholic University of America in DC.