Product Description

A famous account of growing up to be a fanatical football supporter. Told through a series of match reports, FEVER PITCH has enjoyed enormous critical and commercial success since it was first published in 1992. It has helped to create a new kind ofsports writing, and established Hornby as one of the finest writers of his generation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16772 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Amazon.co.uk
Fever Pitch is both an autobiography and a footballing bible rolled into one. Nick Hornby pinpoints 1968 as his formative year--the year he turned 11, the year his parents separated, and the year his father first took him to watch Arsenal play. The author quickly moved "way beyond fandom" into an extreme obsession that has dominated his life, loves, and relationships. His father had initially hoped that Saturday afternoon matches would draw the two closer together, but instead Hornby became completely besotted with the game at the expense of any conversation: "Football may have provided us with a new medium through which we could communicate, but that was not to say that we used it, or what we chose to say was necessarily positive." Girlfriends also played second fiddle to one ball and 11 men. He fantasises that even if a girlfriend "went into labour at an impossible moment" he would not be able to help out until after the final whistle. 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 police officers 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. --Naomi Gesinger

Amazon.co.uk Review
Fever Pitch is both an autobiography and a footballing bible rolled into one. Nick Hornby pinpoints 1968 as his formative year--the year he turned 11, the year his parents separated, and the year his father first took him to watch Arsenal play. The author quickly moved "way beyond fandom" into an extreme obsession that has dominated his life, loves, and relationships. His father had initially hoped that Saturday afternoon matches would draw the two closer together, but instead Hornby became completely besotted with the game at the expense of any conversation: "Football may have provided us with a new medium through which we could communicate, but that was not to say that we used it, or what we chose to say was necessarily positive." Girlfriends also played second fiddle to one ball and 11 men. He fantasises that even if a girlfriend "went into labour at an impossible moment" he would not be able to help out until after the final whistle. 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 police officers 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. --Naomi Gesinger

About the Author
Nick Hornby was born in 1957 and worked as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. His books are FEVER PITCH (1992), HIGH FIDELITY (1995) and ABOUT A BOY (1998). In 1999 he won an E. M. Forster award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in north London.

Customer Reviews

One of the most 'important' books published in the 1990's
Regardless of any literary merit, in terms of its effect on British society this book has to be considered one of the most important books published in recent years. It's hard to remember now that when Hornby was writing this book, football fans were considered to be little more than potential hooligans, or the 'belching sub-humanity' portrayed in Bill Bruford's book 'Among the Thugs'.

'Fever Pitch' made it possible for the vast majority of 'normal' people who watch football, to 'come out of the closet'. Without that, none of the huge changes that have taken place in the way the game is perceived and consumed (for good and bad) would have taken place.

But given all that, what is 'Fever Pith' actually like to read? It's a fine book, packed with accurate observations about not only football, but also life in general. No-one could possibly not relate to the young Hornby's first intimations of human mortality (on seeing the victim of a heart attack, immediately after a Crystal Palace game,) his consideration of the basic human need for quasi-religous rituals which one hopes will influence events totally out of one's control, or the terrible Parable of Gus Caeser. Hornby's articulate prose style, full of self-effacing humour, makes every page a delight to read.

I've heard it said that even people without any knowledge of or interest in football can enjoy this book. My own experience is, however, that this is not the case. Another problem for potential readers is that, with the passage of time, even football fans will find it difficult to remember many of the key events (particularly the momentous 1988/89 season) around which the book is based. Finally, as someone who is not an Arsenal fan, I found Hornby's continual putting-down of his team ("I must be mad to support this lot" etc.) a little annoying. 95% of football fans would give almost anything for their team to be as successful as Arsenal.

Notwithstanding these points, I cannot recommend this book more highly. As the book says, football fans are not emotionally-retarded idiots. In their own way, they understand certain essential truths and experience emotions the rest of the world can have no idea of.

A hilarious and intelligent analysis of a fan's obsession
An extremely intelligent, well-written and humorous description of the psyche of a football fan, the author. "Fever Pitch is an attempt to gain some kind of angle on my obsession." The obsession being Arsenal, or perhaps just the Arsenal ground, Highbury, as Hornby rarely attends away games. It is also an autobiographical romp from 1957-1991. Those who did not grow up in Britain during the 60s and 70s, or who are not familiar with football, or who are not interested in British society or football will probably (but not certainly) find this book hard to read and in many places boring. However, I think the book stands on its own feet as an investigation into a fan's obsession. The flashes of forthright honesty are as funny as Roseanne. Hornby is fascinated and frankly appalled by the selfishness and immaturity of his obsession, yet also mystified by it to the point of awe. "The truth is: for alarmingly large chunks of an average day, I am a moron" (page 2!) And towards the end: "Pete and I left around twelve, I guess, for a three p.m., Sunday afternoon kick-off, and got there just in time. It was an awful game, unspeakable, a nil-nil draw in freezing conditions�c and it was live on television, so we could have stayed at home. My powers of self-analysis fail me completely here; I don't know why we went. We just did." With such endearing writing, Hornby won me over. I also found his comments on the past, present and future of British (well OK, English) football illuminating - especially on hooliganism and disasters like Hillsborough. This was the first Nick Hornby book I read, and I definitely want to read more.

Might be the best book ever dealing with football
Nick Hornby's warm autobiographical book deals with his life as a football fan from 1968 (when he was a teenager) until 1992, especifically as he supported his beloved Arsenal during that time. There's some good insights about football culture (for a true football fan, football is not really an entertainment, a concept that is probably hard to understand in the US, where sports are just a part of the entertainment business) as well as football tactics (there are few good passers in the sports, he says, as hard as this might be to believe to outsiders; Liam Brady, one of his favorite players, was that rare player, a great passer). Each of the chapters (so to call them) deals with a particular football match that he remembers during that period. And along football, he also makes comments on his relationships, be it with his family or with girlfriends. What Hornby tells is the story of English football in his last throes, a time when hooliganism ruled, but when it also was a genuine, integral pastime of the English people. When the Premiere League was established (in 1992, the year this book ends), and the megamoney and the huge tv contracts came along, and some clubs (like, say, Arsenal) did not put in the field a single English player, it became more of a commercial business and less of a cultural phenomenon. And while I like football, it's hard not to come out from reading this book with the impression that being a football fan at the level Hornby was is not a colossal waste of time.