Books Bought:
- A Tale for the Time Being—Ruth Ozeki
- The Face of Britain—Simon Schama
- Black Sun—Geoffrey Wolff
- Eve’s Hollywood—Eve Babitz
- Fat City—Leonard Gardner
- Ask the Dust—John Fante
Books Read:
- Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink—Elvis Costello
- Sam Phillips—Peter Guralnick
- Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations—Greil Marcus
Before I start in on this, it occurs to me that there may be some worryingly literary, or simply disturbingly young, readers who don’t know who Sam Phillips is. Well, perhaps I should explain that this isn’t the column for you. Run along now! Plenty to read elsewhere! And close the door behind you! Thank you. Right. That’s better. It’s easier to think when you’ve cleared out the people who are fidgeting.
A few pages into Peter Guralnick’s monumental biography of Phillips, I was suddenly struck by the familiarity of the story: the Baptist Church, the humble upbringing, the lack of further education, the culture of hard work, the passion for something—and if it’s an American story, it’s often music—that can lift the subject up out of the life and down somewhere altogether more glamorous. I’m not complaining about this familiarity. It’s always enthralling to read this stuff. Peter Guralnick, who has written equally authoritative biographies of Sam Cooke and, of course, Elvis Presley, has been here before. (One wonders whether the fourteen-year-old Peter Guralnick, a Jewish kid growing up in Boston—and I know I’ve said “Peter Guralnick” twice in two lines, but it feels weird referring to a fourteen-year-old by his family name alone—could possibly have anticipated how much of his adult life would be spent contemplating the Southern Baptist Church.)
But actually loads of people have been here before. Most of the biographies I’ve read, and certainly the ones that have meant the most to me, have contained a version of this story. And here’s why: the greatest English-speaking artists grew up without money. Isn’t that amazing? Let’s play a game. You give me your top three middle-class, privately educated graduate artists from the UK or the United States, and I’ll give you my top three artists who grew up without very much of anything. Ready, get set, go. Obviously at this point I have to provide answers for you: this is a magazine, not a bar, and in any case I’m writing this in May 2017 and you’re probably reading it while sitting on a friend’s toilet in April 2022. But I promise I will try hard on your behalf. How about Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Byron? Happy with that? You should be. Nothing wrong with any of...
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contributor
contributor
Nick Hornby is the bestselling author of eight novels, including High Fidelity, About a Boy, and, most recently, Just Like You. He has also published several works of nonfiction including his ground-breaking debut, Fever Pitch, and has written numerous award-winning screenplays for film and television including Brooklyn, Wild, and State of the Union.
