More About Hornby

Just a little bit more about Nick Hornby. One thing that I really like about his writing is that he's not afraid to go on tangents, inserting parenthetical thoughts that come along to make his points. The main character in High Fidelity did this and Hornby wrote that way about himself in Fever Pitch. I appreciated that because it's something that I do and it was good to know that I'm not totally alone in it.

I'm really bad about this. I'll jump all over in a conversation sometimes and The Muse will make me explain how I got from Point A to Point B. I was talking to my aunt The Spunky Nurse one time and made one of these Knievelesque leaps of conversational logic (sometimes they crash and burn, just like Evel). The Spunky Nurse told me that that kind of thing was a sign of schizophrenia. It was something that I had to work on when I first started in law. In law school, I was always wanting to have three footnotes on every page to put in all of the things that I found interesting. Needless to say, this doesn't work very well. People, clients and judges especially, want to get to the point in law and business. I had to work on my writing to get past this. When I'm reading something for pleasure, though, I like writing that takes a few detours. (Simon Winchester is good for this, too. He has lots of good footnotes in his books. He has a new one coming out about the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, to which I am quite looking forward.)

Is this a guy thing? Do guys' minds wander more than women's? Who knows? Just read yourself some Nick Hornby. He's quite good.