Fever Pitch: Complete & Unabridged

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 humour 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 prison like 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

Hornby's Fever Pitch is the Remembrance of Things Past of soccer writing. Like Proust, Hornby has a brilliant feel for the way many of life's profounder moments are filtered through the mundane. Hornby has gone on to greater fame as a novelist, the author of High Fidelity and About a Boy. But his subject in the novels remains the same as in this soccer memoir: men who view their whole life through the prism of their obsession. And Hornby's obsession is soccer.

From the first sentence, we understand it's a love affair: '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.' 'Uncritically' seems to be laying it on a bit thick, though. Each chapter in the book is built around the match that Hornby attended that week. Every detail of Hornby's life from age 11 to 34 is scrutinized through the lens of his unwavering support for Arsenal, a powerhouse London team. When his parents split up, all his dad can offer to interrupt the long, silent weekends is a trip to the match. Young Nick clings to the sport and the team as the only thing that makes sense in his world.

Hornby's strength is his ability to render all of life's moments as reflected through the triumphs and disappointments - mostly the disappointments - of the Arsenal eleven. He acknowledges that his support of Arsenal is the longest, most meaningful relationship he has had in his life. Fever Pitch is Hornby's attempt to understand his own life, and he realizes that this effort would be shallow and disingenuous if he didn't view his life in terms of that relationship.

So, even as he contemplates marriage, we find him fretting over the fortunes of the team. As he tries to quit smoking, we watch him struggle to make it through close matches at the end of the season without lighting up. He freely admits that the start of the Gulf War, which was announced on the scoreboard during a pivotal match with Everton, took a back seat to Arsenal's 1-0 win. Hornby's viewing his entire existence through soccer does not diminish the events of his life. Instead, his memories register all that much more crisply because they pack the emotive force of a well-struck ball hitting the back of the net.