Study Guide to High Fidelity
By Nick Hornby (Indigo 1996)
Key Concepts
Purpose; loneliness; relationships; commitment; love; adulthood
Summary
High Fidelity is written from the perspective of Rob Fleming who runs a record shop and whose girlfriend, Laura, has recently left him. The first part of the book consists of Rob’s analysis of why his relationships with previous girlfriends failed. The remainder concerns how Rob copes—when Laura leaves him he’s not sure whether to be distraught or relieved; later he longs to have her back but can’t help falling for other women.
Rob is a self-absorbed person who has not really grown up properly. His life revolves more around his records than his relationships. He reorganises his collection at times of emotional stress and produces compilation tapes for those he really likes. Eventually he comes to realise his emptiness and finds something to fill it.
Cultural significance
High Fidelity is one of the big book successes of recent years having sold over a million copies since publication. It captures extremely well the sense of lostness, loneliness and pointlessness that characterises so many people’s lives
Disney's Touchstone Pictures has purchased the film rights. Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) will be the director and it seems that John Cusack (Grosse Pointe Blank, Con Air) might star as Rob Fleming.
Biographical background
Nick Hornby (the son of Sir Derek Hornby who was, until recently, chief executive of Eurotunnel) is thirty-nine years old with an autistic son. He recently separated from his wife. He worked as a teacher and journalist before publishing his first book, Fever Pitch. Hornby lives in north London and goes to watch Arsenal every Saturday. ‘He regards sport and rock-and-roll as essential, if regrettable, components of the male psyche.’
Other books and films by Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch (Indigo, 1996) (first published 1992)
Nick Hornby and David Evans Fever Pitch Video Screenplay (1997)
Nick Hornby, About a Boy (Victor Gollancz, 1998)
Fever Pitch dir. David Evans, written by Nick Hornby (Channel 4 films, 1997)
Other resources on these ideas
Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary, (Picador 1996)
Nick Hornby website
Review of High Fidelity by Denise Sullivan
Nick Hornby Audio interview (25 March 1996 in Potsdam) by Trevor Wilson and Annette Duffy
Overview
The book starts with Rob Fleming's reminiscences of splitting up with his earlier girlfriends. The latest break-up—with Laura—does not make his top five. His first girlfriend was at the age of 12 or 13 and the relationship lasted for just two hours a day for three days. The second, Penny, was a nice girl but the relationship ended because she wouldn't let Rob grope her. He was devastated that she lost her virginity to someone else three weeks later. The third, Jackie, he pinched from his best friend. It ruined his friendship and the relationship didn't last. The fourth, Sarah, was when he was at college and lasted two years. Rob was very insecure in the relationship and she left him for someone else. As a result he finished his course and started working in a record shop. The fifth was an average person like Rob but they had little in common.
Now Laura has left him and he doesn't feel as bad about it as he expects—at least to start with.
Rob runs a record shop called Championship Vinyl where he is helped by Dick and Barry. Both of them are quite sad characters. The business is not going terribly well. Barry swears at a customer who comes in looking for a Stevie Wonder single and sends him away.
At home Rob reorganises his record collection—something he often does in times of emotional stress. Having the new filing system gives him a sense of security.
Rob goes with Dick and Barry to a pub called the Harry Lauder to hear an American singer called Marie LaSalle. The first song she sings makes Rob cry. As she continues Rob finds himself suddenly missing Laura very strongly and falling in love with Marie LaSalle at the same time. During the break they buy cassettes from her and she starts talking to them. She's looking for a good record shop and Barry and Dick fall over themselves telling her about Championship Vinyl.
The following day Rob discovers that Laura has moved in with Ian—the man who lived upstairs until six weeks previously. He worries terribly over how good a lover Ian is. He wakes in the night feeling intensely lonely: "... I'm here, in this stupid little flat, on my own, and I'm 35 years old, and I own a tiny failing business, and my friends don't seem to be friends at all but people whose phone numbers I haven't lost... it's only just beginning to occur to me that it's important to have something going on somewhere, a work or at home, otherwise you're just clinging on. If I lived in Bosnia, then not having a girlfriend wouldn't seem like the most important thing in the world, but here in Crouch End it does. You need as much ballast as possible to stop you floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one bloke on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then? I've got to get more stuff, more clutter, more detail in here, because at the moment I'm in danger of falling off the edge."
A week later Rob is invited to a house to buy a record collection. It is the best record collection Rob has ever seen and the woman offers it to him for 50 pounds because her husband has gone off with someone else. Rob is tempted but doesn't want any part of it.
Rob, Dick and Barry are on the guest list for Marie's next gig at another pub. This time someone else is singing with her—T-Bone Taylor. Depressed, Rob goes home. He doesn't go into work for some days but reminisces about his relationship with Laura. Laura had got pregnant at one point and Rob had a brief fling with somebody else at the same time. As a result, Laura had an abortion. Immediately afterwards Rob borrowed £5,000 from her and never paid it back. He also told her that he was unhappy in the relationship.
Laura is outside the shop when he leaves one day and they go to the flat. She wants to collect some things. Rob wants to know whether they have any chance of getting back together but ends up just being rude. He is, however, convinced that he wants Laura back again. Straight afterwards he goes to the pub to meet Dick and Barry and finds that Marie and T-Bone are there too. Afterwards he goes with her to her flat and they sleep together. When he wakes up the following morning he again feels the sense of emptiness: "I've got no ballast, nothing to weigh me down, and if I don't hang on I'll just float away.
The following week Rob arranges to meet Laura. He desperately wants her back and can't stop calling her. He decides to make contact with his old girlfriends. The first, he discovers, married the boy she ditched him for. He tracks down the second, Penny, easily and they arrange to meet. He discovers that she had been madly in love with him but had wanted to wait to have sex. When he ditched her, she was so angry that she couldn't be bothered to resist when the next boy tried to have sex with her. Jackie had married Phil and Rob goes around for a meal with them. He finds them incredibly boring—"possibly because they've been married too long, and therefore have nothing to talk about." He goes out for a pizza with Sarah who wishes that she had never left Rob. Eventually he manages to get in touch with Charlie who invites him to make up the numbers at a dinner party. He feels very out of his depth.
After month or so Laura moves her stuff out of Rob's flat. A little later she rings Rob in great distress because her father has died. Laura's mum asks Rob to go to the funeral. Laura's friend Liz makes Rob very angry and he leaves early. As he's waiting for a bus Laura arrives in her car—she has come to find him. She wants Rob to sleep with her and they drive to a quiet spot. Rob is worried that she had unprotected sex with Ian and they end up going to a pub to talk. After this they are back together.
Soon afterwards Laura takes Rob to task for his aimlessness and lack of purpose in life. He has become very aware of this. Two weeks later they go for dinner with Laura's friends. Rob has always been cynical about them but discovers that he really likes them. For the first time Rob concedes that it is not what you like but what you are like that is important.
One day Rob notices a fly poster that advertises the return of the dance club that Rob used to be the DJ for. Laura had decided to restart it as the late birthday present for him since he had never been happier than when he was a DJ. It gave him a sense of purpose.
Ideas for discussion
- What matters most in life for Rob? What do you think he is really looking for?
- How would you summarise his beliefs?
- What do you think Rob’s attitudes are to:
- music
- women
- life
- himself
- love
- morality
- What could be the root cause of Rob’s problems? Is it common to all men in the 90s?
- Rob remarks on his lack of ballast (p. 67, 108, 211). What does constitute ballast for Rob? What could do so?
- How would you envisage the story developing now that Laura and Rob are back together? Is this the answer to his emptiness?
- In what ways does High Fidelity hold up a mirror to life?
- How do you think Rob would tend to respond to Christians?
- What aspects of the gospel message would attract him?
- What would be his stumbling blocks?
- What do we need to do in order to meet the needs of people like Rob and bring them to Christ?
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