October 1, 2022
Comparing the lives of two protean geniuses and gleaning the lessons thereof. Hornby considers together the lives of two of "My People--the people I have thought about a lot, over the years, the artists who have shaped me, inspired me, made me think about my own work." This exercise will interest a particular Venn diagram of readers. You don't have to be a fan of Prince, Dickens, and Hornby, but 2 out of 3 would help. Among the qualities that unite Hornby's two heroes is that they had "no off switch," continuously pouring out work until their deaths, both at the same age, 58. Both had truncated, difficult childhoods; both hit a spectacular creative zenith in their 20s; both went to war with their publishers and damaged their reputations considerably by doing so. Hornby also takes on the idea, popularized in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, that virtuosity requires 10,000 hours of practice, putting the focus instead on reading, listening, watching, and bringing himself into the picture, as he does from time to time. "I am closer to being Dickens than being Prince, although of course that's like saying I'm closer to Mars than to Saturn," he writes. "But I suspect my degree of passion for books, music, TV and movies has never been 'normal.' " In an interesting section on Prince's androgyny, Hornby points out that "Prince's sexuality came from the future"--i.e., now, when the notion of nonbinary gender is part of mainstream culture. Dickens' sexuality "came from the future" only in the sense that he went through a public shaming in the media when his relationship with an 18-year-old girl became public. Most importantly, writes Hornby, "Prince and Dickens tell me, every day, Not good enough. Not quick enough. Not enough. More, more, more. Think quicker, be more ambitious, be more imaginative." No one else could have gotten a book like this published, but no one else could have pulled it off, either.
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October 10, 2022
What did writer Charles Dickens and musician Prince have in common? “They have both lived on, of course, but more vigorously than one might have expected,” according to this breezy take on creativity by Hornby (Just Like You). For Hornby, both men are sui generis talents, and he finds no shortage of parallels between them as he unpacks the artists’ lives, the movies (or Dickens’s case, musicals) their work inspired, their mid-career productivity, and their business conflicts (Prince battled with his record label, Dickens railed against intellectual theft). A mixture of speculation and research comprises the section “Women,” which explores Dickens’s and Prince’s wives, lovers, and muses. Hornby writes that Prince was a “relatively rare creature, the androgynous heterosexual,” while Dickens’s penchant for younger women was a “weakness.” At the end of their lives—Prince died from an accidental painkiller overdose, and Dickens was felled by a stroke—Hornby concludes that both had become cultural touchstones, but were hopelessly addicted to work. Hornby’s admiration for his subjects is infectious, though readers who come to this with a basic knowledge with either artist will find much of the terrain covered here familiar. Even so, it’s a zesty tribute to two cultural legends not often spoken about in the same breath. Agent: Georgia Garrett, RCW Literary.
October 15, 2022
Who but Nick Hornby would pair the creators of The Pickwick Papers and Purple Rain? Both the beloved Victorian novelist Dickens and the flamboyant artist Prince were epically prolific, sharing a frenetic devotion to work, and both died prematurely in their late fifties. Both had passionate attachments to women and both took matters to extremes. "Lots of rock stars have managed to seduce young women without having to write a dozen songs and produce a whole album for them" as Prince did with Vanity, Apollonia, and Carmen Electra, notes Hornby. Whatever his ulterior motives, Prince genuinely supported female artists. Dickens, despite his aura of respectability, deserted his wife of more than 20 years after falling violently in love with an 18-year-old actress. It's no coincidence that the older women in Dickens novels tend to "grotesques and caricatures," while the heroines are "young, beautiful and good." What most compels Hornby is the blazingly original and indelible works each creator left behind. "What matters to me is that Prince and Dickens tell me, every day, not good enough. Not quick enough. Not enough. More, more, more."
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