Nick Hornby's Polysyllabic Spree
A Collection of Essays Originally Published in Believer Magazine
Nick Hornby writes about the books he reads and the books he intends to read in this 2004 essay collection culled from Believer magazine, a McSweeney's publication.
Publisher McSweeney's Books
Publication Date 2004
ISBN 9781932416244
Hornby publishes his monthly columns from Believer magazine
The Polysyllabic Spree by British author Nick Hornby is a collection of monthly columns he wrote for Believer magazine, which is an offshoot of the magazine McSweeney’s. The title comes from The Polyphonic Spree, which is an eclectic and sprawling musical group that incorporates instruments from almost every style of music.
Likewise, Hornby’s book is sprawling and generous, with insight into Nick Hornby the writer and the human being. Each chapter begins with a two-part list: books Hornby has bought in the previous month, and books he has actually read. Eventually, Hornby confesses that he actually buys many more books than he lists in his “bought” category.
Nick Hornby's literary taste is broad, deep, and wide, encompassing everything from books on how to quit smoking to intelligent fiction like Zöe Heller’s Notes on a Scandal.
Book is less pretentious than Believer or McSweeney’s
McSweeney’s is a product of Dave Eggers, who wrote a blockbuster memoir called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and never let his readers or anyone else forget it. Believer is a magazine about literature, politics, culture, authors, music, and art. Like parent publication McSweeney’s, Believer is the target of criticism that it is pretentious and snarky. While Hornby has contributed extensively to Eggers’ publications, he manages not to take part in the pretension and superiority that makes McSweeney’s at times unpalatable, even if its publishers are in on the “joke.”
That is perhaps part of Hornby’s attraction: he openly admits that writers are prone to messy lives, and that vanity is dangerous to writing. In The Polysyllabic Spree, Hornby includes excerpts from some of his favorite books. From Chekhov’s A Life in Letters, Hornby quotes, “True talent always sits in the shade, mingles with the crowd, avoids the limelight … As Krylov said, the empty barrel makes more noise than the full one …”
Nick Hornby used to be the music critic for The New Yorker, and has written two books that were made into popular movies: About a Boy and High Fidelity. His other novels include How to Be Good, which is written in the voice of a woman, A Long Way Down, and the young adult novel Slam. Hornby is also author of essay collections Fever Pitch, My Favorite Year: A Collection of Football Writing, Songbook, and Housekeeping vs. the Dust, a follow-up collection to The Polysyllabic Spree.
Born in Surrey, England, Hornby graduated from Cambridge University. How to Be Good won the WH Smith Award for Fiction in 2002. A Long Way Down, Hornby’s 2005 novel, was a finalist for both the 2005 Whitbread Novel Award and a 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Hornby the E.M. Forster Award in 1999.
