People on the Metro are passively nosy, which is perfectly acceptable given the confined space and general boring nature of sitting in a rail car.
But sometimes I wish there were a way to announce to everyone you are open to clearing up any misconceptions they may have formed about you. Never was that more true than the past two weeks, as I sat on the train reading a bright yellow book with the words “Juliet, Naked” emblazoned across the front.
The book is the latest by Nick Hornby, and the title is actually quite PG — a clever play on the title of an album from one of the main characters. I think I may have dog-eared a record number of pages, including the first ever double-dog-ear. I actually had to stop and think about how best to accomplish that feat and settled on doing the top of one side of the page and the bottom of the other side.
Hornby’s strength is in the way his characters interact, and being able to have them push the story along both by themselves and in their collective interaction. This story is no different, as two sets of people on two continents play out somewhat parallel situations. They include an aging musician, his die-hard fan and the fan’s “girlfriend.” The girl exists, it’s just that their situation is hard to define.
Three quick notes before I get into what I think will be more substantive points:
1. In one scene the girl, Annie, is sitting at the kitchen table reading The Guardian. If you’ve never read it, you’re missing out on one of the better newspapers out there.
2. She works at a local museum that is putting on a retrospective exhibit about the town in 1964. Someone sends them a picture “with a little girl standing next to a Punch and Judy booth.” A month ago I would have no idea what that meant, but thanks to the last book I read, I actually knew what they were talking about.
3. The musician, Tucker, is getting set to host a daughter he has never met and went to the store to get some food. As a former hot dog addict, I appreciated his grocery store train of thought: “The trouble was that even young female carnivores wouldn’t eat red meat. Well, hot dogs were pinky orange. Did pinky orange count as red? He was pretty sure the strange hue was chemical rather than sanguine. Vegeterians could eat chemicals, right?”
When I say that the fan, Duncan, is a fan of Tucker’s work, that’s really an understatement. Tucker’s work defines Duncan’s life. A large part of Duncan’s everyday routine revolves around a website for Tucker fans, even though Tucker hasn’t made any new music in 20 years. They discuss every aspect of the music, but in true modern fashion also delve into Tucker’s personal life. Since Tucker hasn’t been seen in public since disappearing from the music scene, most of the information is complete conjecture.
While considering what he perceives as an intrusion into his life, Tucker thinks to himself, “If you wanted to get into people’s living rooms, could you then object if they wanted to get into yours?”
That is, if your goal is to get famous and have your work become a part of people’s lives, can you expect them to accept that as a one-way transaction? If you’re a Kardashian, and you have a television show that purports to follow your real life, can you get mad if someone takes a picture of you at the grocery store?
I’m all for respecting people’s privacy — it’s really none of my business what the Kardashians are eating for breakfast. But when you voluntarily break down that wall and define your public interaction in that way, it’s hard to adequately discern exactly where the line should be.
Later, Duncan talks about Tucker’s musical contributions and says he doesn’t think Tucker really appreciates his own work. “I don’t think people with talent necessarily value it,” he says, “because it all comes so easy to them, and we never value things that come easy to us.”
How many people do you know who downplay what are clearly great talents? They may not be composing a Beethoven-esque concerto, but you think, “If only they did something with ____.” In a world where the Kardashians are famous for…whatever they are famous for, maybe we need to recalibrate the way we recognize and develop talent.
Two quick final items:
At one point Duncan is having a bit of a life crisis and wants to “try to grab the steering wheel back from the maniac who seemed to be driving his life.”
Without revealing any plot points, page 395 holds further proof that women are crazy.
For those scoring at home, this is book No. 15 of the year. As in years past, aiming for the 20 range, but not sure that’s in the cards for 2010.
