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: #9149 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.

Landmark novel for 'new wave' footie fans
Football was going through something of a renaissance in the mid-90's. The improvements forced on clubs by the Taylor report were beginning to take shape, making stadiums more welcoming, safer enviroments.And with the big TV money beginning to flow it was a short lived era where die hard regulars, families and new fans mixed together in grounds that still retained much of the atmosphere of the terraces. A transitional time for the game in our country but a transition that went too far in my opinion, engulfing the game with a greed and disdain for the loyalty of fans that kept many clubs alive throughout the difficult times. Such a shame that the healthy balance between safety and affordabilty proposed in the Taylor report and put into practice for a short period eventually came an inevitable but distant second as football clubs actively chased the buck and pandered to a new type of fan who was fresh, eager and easy to exploit. Loyalty was forgotten as working class fans were conveniently branded as thugs(although it was only ever a small minority of troublemakers even in the bad times) to make it acceptable for the media and clubs alike to brag about having 'A much better 'CLASS' of fan at foot-ball now'. As the old guard were priced out and shoved aside clubs made way for the 90's bandwagon jumpers who flocked to the most successful clubs and who fed on a diet of Fantasy Football and patronising, celebrity endorsed 'foot-ball is suddenly cool' dross such as 'My Summer With Des'. To this type of fan 'FEVER PITCH' was the bible and it made going to foot-ball a living nightmare that just seems to get worse with every passing year. You see there was nothing new in what was been said in this book, nor nothing new being said that hasn't been said before about the passion fans feel for the game. But what it did manage to achieve for better or for worse(and in my view definitely the worse) was to make the chattering classes feel comfortable and at ease with the game. Not a bad thing in itself, but Nick Hornby went a step further by evoking an air of superiority which to this day is apparent and no matter where you sit in a foot-ball ground I promise you will not be far from a smug, self indulgent Nigel who though having never played the game, seen the game or even heard of the game until five minutes ago, now seems convinced that he(she) has some deeper, profound, pseudo intellectual insight into the game that I(as a mere life time supporter) could never hope in all my years of primitive existence to grasp. These annoying, pompous, self-appointed master tacticians are never, I repeat NEVER right about anything but ever since the mid-90's they are everywhere and every match I now go to comes with a running commentary of the glaringly obvious in that most gut scrapingly annoying(I could re-invent the wheel) voice, seemingly convinced he(or she)is a revoloutionary tactical genius who views the game from a higher plain than we mere mortals. These people need to be eradicated and know NOTHING about football I can assure you, but thanks largely to Fever Pitch they now largely dominate football grounds with a bloated sense of self-importance and a love for no team outside the top 4. What ever happened to the breed known as the QPR fan? Go to any pub outside of any stadium in the country and I am certain you will hear a better insight into the game than the one on offer in the pages of Fever Pitch and the avalanche of dinner party footie disciples that were born as a result. It is no newsflash the game today has become a greed-ridden, bloated parody of itself and Fever Pitch played an influential role in inspiring footie delirium in marketing execs up and down the country who could now bore colleagues at work with romanticised, pretentious tales of "Braving the terraces of Grimbsby on a cold windy night". Suddenly football writing was poetic,(as long as you were middle class and went to Cambridge, anyway). Man loves foot-ball(yawn). Man loves football and is a smug intellectual and suddenly the Sunday supplements are enamored with 'the beautiful game'. Cue fresh, beaming 'footies great, isn't it?'(Yes, I already know you tedious cretin) faces the length and breadth of the country and the rest is history.