High Fidelity

Rob is an asshole, or as British author Nick Hornby writes in High Fidelity, an arsehole. I’ve seen the movie High Fidelity before, with John Cusack playing lead character Rob, and move-Rob is an asshole too. But book-Rob is definitely more of a jerk.

High Fidelity is about record store owner, music enthusiast Rob and his lawyer girlfriend/ex-girlfriend Laura. The two split up, and then Rob is left trying to make sense of the break-up, of Laura going to live with someone named Ray. He is also left trying to figure out his life, his career direction, and what to do about his floundering record store. He contemplates death. He sleeps with an American singer-songwriter. This book is all about a man in transition, trying to figure out his life, so naturally I could relate to Rob a bit. Rob is sort of what would happen if a mid-twenty something was actually a mid-thirty something. He is still directionless, immature, and self-centered. His closest friends, Dick and Barry, are similar.

But there is something sympathetic about Rob, and admirable too. He has impeccable music taste. Rob reminds me of the jerky boys I put up with in high school because they had good taste in music. And at the end of the day though, he ends up being the kind of character you have a soft spot for, although I still can’t figure out why. He isn’t completely horrible, I’ll give him that, but he is still a real big jerk.

High Fidelity is great because it is an in depth study of Rob’s character and of his relationship with Laura as well as an amazing commentary on long-term relationships. However, it is also a book about music. Rarely can a book about music and a book about relationships be combined so brilliantly, so that each of the themes is equally expressed. Usually one theme overshadows the other.

Written in the first person, some of Rob’s music-musings really hit home for me. Rob, Dick, and Barry constantly list their top fives (favorite singles, best songs about death), so you can easily get an insight into everything these well-versed characters enjoy. In my favorite music-music, Rob is discussing some of his top favorite songs, most of which are sad (“Only Love Can Break Your Heart” by Neil Young, “Last Night I Dreamed Somebody Loved Me” by the Smiths, etc.), “Some of these songs I have listened to around once a week, on average (three hundred times in the first month, every now and again thereafter), since I was sixteen or nineteen or twenty-one. How can that not leave you bruised somewhere? How can that not turn you into the sort of person liable to break into little bits when your first love goes all wrong? What came first—the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music?” (Hornby 25). 

So, whether miserable or happy, here is a playlist of some of Rob’s favorite songs:  

High Fidelity playlist--On Youtube1. Let’s Get it On—Marvin Gaye
2. Last Night I Dreamed Somebody Loved Me|
3. Janie Jones—The Clash
4. Thunder Road—Bruce Springsteen
5. Got to Get You Off My Mind—Soloman Burke
6. The Look of Love—Dusty Springfield
7. This is the House that Jack Build—Aretha Franklin
8. Baby Let’s Play House—Elvis Presley
9. Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag—James Brown
10. Back in the USA—Chuck Berry
11. So tired of Being Alone—Al Greene