Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
In about 1990 there was this sea change in the way people expressed themselves about football – more emotionally. Nick’s book sets the stall out for that. It shows the inner life of the football fan and describes how men can be thinking about football all the time – that it’s always there.
You’ve chosen Nick Hornby’s novel, Fever Pitch.
Just because it sets the standard for writing about football that isn’t just statistics and ‘this is who won the FA Cup in 1918’. In about 1990 there was this sea change in the way people expressed themselves about football – more emotionally. Nick’s book sets the stall out for that. It shows the inner life of the football fan and describes how men can be thinking about football all the time – that it’s always there, that it is the backdrop to your thoughts if your team is about to play an important match. It’s very easy to read and very easy to connect to if you’re a football fan.
I support Chelsea and I don’t like Arsenal. They were managed by George Graham at the time [1992] and were just the epitome of victorious dullness, so it’s a considerable achievement of Nick’s to get me to empathise with him.
Read full interview
Writer, comedian and football fan David Baddiel says football writing changed in the 1990s, as men became more openly emotional about the game and about life in general – a sea change epitomised by Paul Gascoigne’s tears at Italia 90 and captured in two iconic British books – Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch and Pete Davies’s All Played Out. Baddiel and Skinner are doing a series of 2010 World Cup podcasts for Absolute Radio.
