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Fever Pitch
 
 
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Fever Pitch [Paperback]

Nick Hornby (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (108 customer reviews)
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In the States, Nick Hornby is best know as the author of High Fidelity and About a Boy, two wickedly funny novels about being thirtysomething and going nowhere fast. In Britain he is revered for his status as a fanatical football writer (sorry, fanatical soccer writer), owing to Fever Pitch--which is both an autobiography and a footballing Bible rolled into one. Hornby pinpoints 1968 as his formative year--the year he turned 11, the year his parents separated, and the year his father first took him to watch Arsenal play. The author quickly moved "way beyond fandom" into an extreme obsession that has dominated his life, loves, and relationships. His father had initially hoped that Saturday afternoon matches would draw the two closer together, but instead Hornby became completely besotted with the game at the expense of any conversation: "Football may have provided us with a new medium through which we could communicate, but that was not to say that we used it, or what we chose to say was necessarily positive." Girlfriends also played second fiddle to one ball and 11 men. He fantasizes that even if a girlfriend "went into labor at an impossible moment" he would not be able to help out until after the final whistle.

Fever Pitch is not a typical memoir--there are no chapters, just a series of match reports falling into three time frames (childhood, young adulthood, manhood). While watching the May 2, 1972, Reading v. Arsenal match, it became embarrassingly obvious to the then 15-year-old that his white, suburban, middle-class roots made him a wimp with no sense of identity: "Yorkshire men, Lancastrians, Scots, the Irish, blacks, the rich, the poor, even Americans and Australians have something they can sit in pubs and bars and weep about." But a boy from Maidenhead could only dream of coming from a place with "its own tube station and West Indian community and terrible, insoluble social problems."

Fever Pitch reveals the very special intricacies of British football, which readers new to the game will find astonishing, and which Hornby presents with remarkable humor and honesty--the "unique" chants sung at matches, the cold rain-soaked terraces, giant cans of warm beer, the trains known as football specials carrying fans to and from matches in prisonlike conditions, bottles smashing on the tracks, thousands of policemen waiting in anticipation for the cargo of hooligans. The sport and one team in particular have crept into every aspect of Hornby's life--making him see the world through Arsenal-tinted spectacles. --Naomi Gesinger

From Publishers Weekly

Brought to print to take advantage of America's presumed fascination with the '94 World Cup (the first ever held here), Fever Pitch is a 24-year obsessional diary of English club football (soccer, to us Americans) games Hornby has witnessed and the way these games have become inextricable from his personal life. Hornby is the kind of fanatic who merely shrugs about the "tyranny" the sport exerts over his life--the mumbled excuses he must give at every missed christening or birthday party as a result of a schedule conflict. "Sometimes hurting someone," he writes, "is unavoidable." These occasions tend to bring out "disappointment and tired impatience" in his friends and family, but it is when he is exposed as a "worthless, shallow worm" that the similarly stricken reader can relate to the high costs of caring deeply about a game that means nothing to one's more well-adjusted friends. These moments are fleeting, however. The book has not been tailored for American audiences, so readers lacking a knowledge of English club football's rules, traditions, history and players will be left completely in the dark by Hornby's obscure references. Unfortunately, he has neither Roger Angell's ability to take us inside the game nor the pathos of Frederick Exley's brilliantly disturbed autobiographical trilogy. Though Hornby does show flashes of real humor, Fever Pitch features mainly pedestrian insights on life and sport, and then it's on to the next game--the equivalent, for an American reader, of a nil-nil tie. Author appearances.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

108 Reviews
5 star:
 (67)
4 star:
 (22)
3 star:
 (8)
2 star:
 (9)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (108 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars For Any Obessed Fan, April 17 2003
By 
Gregory P Ramshaw (Edmonton, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Fever Pitch (Paperback)
I read this book when living in England - and though I knew little about Arsenal and even less about the games and players Hornby describes - I understood it completely. Its not really a book about Arsenal, or even football per se, but more about the bond with "our" team, and how that is reflected in our other "real world" relationships. No matter where we are or who we are with, the team seems to always be there in the background to bear witness.

A wonderful read - no matter which team is your obession.

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5.0 out of 5 stars 104 degrees, Aug 4 2007
This review is from: Fever Pitch (Paperback)
FEVER PITCH will not resonate with everyone, the same way Palahniuk's LULLABY won't and the likes of McCrae's KATZENAJAMMER will not fall into the category of "must haves." But, it is an interesting book and you don't have to have a vested interest in football (European--Soccer, really) to enjoy this title. Set in memoir style, FEVER PITCH is a quizzical look at fanaticism with one sport, and how it affect the lives of people. Hornby's insights are keen, and the lets us in on a world that ranges from shallowness to great depth. Better known for his HIGH FIDELITY, Hornby nevertheless hits a high mark with this book. This book explores the way the game brings people together and at other times, tears them apart. The most riveting aspect of this title is the way Hornby shows us how the "game" is woven so into his own life. If you enjoyed his ABOUT A BOY or the ribald and fun KATZENJAMMER (McCrae), the this book will not disappoint with its insight into the world of sports.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Oi! A Confessional of Passion and Frenzy by Hornby, Jun 14 2005
This review is from: Fever Pitch (Paperback)
FEVER PITCH is basically a tribute to English football. Hornby (as a real-life Arsenal fan) has a unique talent here in weaving a story out of autobiographical moments with a slight narrative where the glory and obsessive nature of football is eeked out on every page. Within this you can quickly deduce that the thing always and forever on a football fan's mind is HIS fixture list and everything else (friends, family, love and moments) is second best. Each year, each month, each season of the narrator's life can be calculated and described by footballing moments - such is the craze, the frenzy, the desperation for his team and the beautiful game.

For those who may feel too 'footballed-out' by this review -you can always try the film version. This little ditty, starring the wonderful Colin Firth, is a far more sensitive football-account than the book. Firth plays a football-crazed yet vulnerable man who even seems troubled by his obsession.The film also mingles in an aspect of love (something that is not heavily referenced in the book) and loss where a girlfriend becomes an outsider on match day - thus appealing to women probably the world over who ultimately always stand on the periphery of the game.

I would recommend the book to anybody. Although completely devoted to football it's still a great account and shows some great (autobiographical) work by Hornby. He did the same for music in HIGH FIDELITY -- read that one as well rather than see the film. In addition to FEVER PITCH, I need to mention another little book called THE LOSERS' CLUB: COMPLETE RESTORED EDITION by Richard Perez (which bears more than a passing resemblance to HIGH FIDELITY -- spontaneity and passion (not to mention HUMOR) count for a lot and these books have it spades.

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