"... I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.”
I love High Fidelity. I read the book as a teenager and at some point my Mum must have rented the tape (tape!) from the video man who used to call in to people at home and rent a film for a couple of quid. They were obviously bootleg, you had to know someone else on his ‘route’ to get him to visit, and if you’d been a customer for a while you could request films and he’d ‘see what he could do’. Such an innocent time.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I saw the movie version of High
Fidelity. And I loved it. I was pretty into music as a teenager (I would have
been….12 when the film came out, a high impressionable age). I wanted to own
every album ever. I owned stuff I thought I should even though I wasn’t that
keen (I know I’m committing suicide here, but Nirvana’s Nevermind would come
under this category). I knew Rob Fleming/Gordon (book/film) was a loser, and
horrible really, but he was still a sort of icon to me.
I still watch the film reasonably often, maybe once a year?
Which doesn’t sound like much, but think honestly, think about it. What movie do you watch every year other
than Christmas films and Lord of the Rings??
Anyway, I've watched the film countless times but I hadn’t reread the book….until now.
And my goodness, Rob Fleming is an absolute arsehole! He
admits it himself of course, but I just didn’t remember how bad he was! He’s
horrible. Really awful. Sexist, self-absorbed, ignorant, prejudiced… And yet
you can’t help but relate to him. Everyone has the same thoughts he does, he
just has more, and worse ones, and he believes them and acts on them. But his
fears are universal, of stalling, of committing and missing out, not wanting something
but not wanting its absence.
Which just makes his progression even more compelling. It happens
fairly quickly ostensibly after Laura takes him back, but there are moments
peppered throughout. He has minor breakthroughs for himself when he’s chasing
down past lovers but the reader can see the big ones – realising Charlie is a
pretentious twit, struggling to get anything going for his birthday, confronting
his fear of loss when Laura’s Dad passes away.
These prime him, tenderise him, slough off the hard shell he’s
been building. So when Laura takes him back you can see that he has changed. He’s
still the same person of course - he’s probably still an arsehole! - but there’s
potential again. Wiggle room for him to not be such an acerbic critic but to
embrace a bit more, fill his life a bit more.
You see this when he meets Laura’s friends who he really likes,
despite their ‘awful’ record collection (a moment which made my 12 year old self
cringe, as her 30 year old equivalent quite likes a lot of what Rob considers
naff), and you see this after Marie’s gig at Championship Vinyl where he wants his
life to be more and sees himself as the driver for this rather than railing at
the world for not giving it to him on a plate.
This book teaches the Robs of the world that people can
surprise you. Laura isn’t sitting around waiting for you, she’s got problems
of her own. Barry can actually sing; he can read the room and play for the
crowd rather than just for himself. Dick can meet a woman and have a
relationship. People can be fantastic even if they different hobbies or musical
choices to you. Your parents can have a social life.
Others are not side-characters in your life, we are not what
you have assumed we are. Or if we are, that’s not our totality. We are all
multi-faceted, well-developed main characters. You just don’t get to hear our
inner narrator or see the backstory.
Because, essentially, it’s not what you like. It’s what you
are like.
*Quote from Nick Hornby
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