From: Jim M
Category: Amis
Date: 9/13/99
Time: 8:15:40 AM
Remote Name: 195.11.50.207
"Hornby is celebrating the right of society's outcast to survive & prosper in (modern) life's straitjacket."
What are you talking about, Ed?
MY ARSE!
Hornby celebrates nothing of the sort. His first two books are not about society’s outcasts in any way, and if ‘About A Boy’ is, it explicitly concerns how outcasts can be sanded and sheened into society, and therefore reads as a tract on the surrender of our individuality into the thick of the masses. Which, yeah sure, is totally worth celebrating. You could say it concludes with some sort of cosy hymn to the quirky distended non-conventional family unit, but ultimately the fact that it compulsively contrives towards a unit of any state negates any ideas about survival and prosperity of outcasts. Much as I enjoyed ‘High Fidelity’, I found ‘About A Boy’ aggressively clinical…Hornby blatantly and lazily plumbing ideas that he hopes will get an ‘oh yes, I’ve felt that!’ feeling…and that to me is downright manipulation. Yes, I’m all for ‘relief reading’ but not this kind of pap. Laughter in the dark? Not even a titter.