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First of all, we should ask ourselves why music?

Music today, in this contemporary world, is available to everyone. A lot of people cannot even imagine their lives without music. Music was, according to some linguists, the first attempt of people to communicate. A lot of things can be said through music. In the 20th and 21st centuries, music became a universal thing. Sometimes when people are feeling blue, they turn to music. Through music, people can express emotions. In the music of the 80s and 90s, when music started to develop on a higher level, the creation of subcultures led to the appearance of various ideas of the rebellious youth. Rage, anger, frustration but also love, loneliness and various other emotions became he central part of some songs. In the novel High Fidelity, music serves as a filter and expression of emotions for the main character who is unable to express his feelings directly.

Music as an inspiration for Novel

When we take Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity, the first thing we notice is the title. High fidelity is actually the clear sound that a certain equipment produces, in short Hi Fi. This already hints us that he is probably going to write about something related to music. There are a lot of speculations why he chose music as one of the central themes in his novel, I can only offer you my personal opinion.
In Nick Hornby’s 31 Songs, I came across a lot of surprising details about his feelings related to music. The author himself says that music is one of the most important things in his personal life. Although in one of his interviews he tries to distance himself from his character Rob Flemming and the notion that High Fidelity is actually an autobiographical novel, in 31 Songs he gives us hints that it is not necessarily so. Lots of songs that are incorporated into High Fidelity are actually Hornby’s favorite songs as well.
For example “Thunder Road” from Bruce Springsteen. This song is in the second place in Hornby’s 31 Songs and it also found its way on Rob Flemming’s “top five side one track records of all time.” Coincidence? In addition, Hornby confesses in 31 Songs that he makes compilation tapes, which is not surprising because a lot of us do, but he does that every time something new comes out. Hornby writes about things he knows, like football in Fever Pitch and of course music in High Fidelity.

The diversity and variety of music genres today is quite extraordinary. Everybody can find something that suits his or her taste. In High Fidelity, Nick Hornby introduces us a wide variety of music, from pop and rock across jazz and blues to punk and dance, we can actually follow the entire history of music.
This mixture of music genres can be compared to the mixture of genres in literature. Postmodernists in their strivings to reach this equilibrium between mainstream and genre literature, mix elements of various genres in their work in order to bring these two “literatures” together. Hornby writes about popular culture for contemporary readership and this kind of writing is not considered serious by the critics, although the very magic of Nick Hornby’s writing lies in this quality of approaching literature NOW, also mixing of genres and intertextuality are characteristics of postmodern writing.
The mixing of genres in this novel can be seen in two different levels : the mixture of genres in music as well as in the novel. Music is the framework of this novel but also a filter through which everything is judged by the characters.References to names of bands and their songs, TV shows and other things suggest This very interdiscoursivity, the communication of the text and music in the novel makes the novel very unique and postmodern. While we read the novel, we have the feeling that in the background there is constantly some kind of music playing, even though when you lift your head there is complete silence.

Finally, I would like to quote Nick Hornby himself :
“Dave Eggers has a theory that we play certain songs over and over, at least those among us who do that, because we have the need to solve them.The truth is that in the beginning of a relationship with a song there is a phase very much like the state of emotional confusion.”
I had this very same feeling when I read High Fidelity for the first time. I had to read it once more later and I will probably read it once more after I turn in this paper.


Music as an inspiration for Life

In the beginning of the novel, we meet Rob Flemming, a 35 year old record shop owner, whose girlfriend just left him. When we start reading the novel, we do not get the feeling that a grown up man is talking. His tone and way of thinking very much resembles to the way of thinking f an adolescent. Therefore, we can conclude that Rob is actually a very immature adult, who is incapable of coping with his own life.

Rob is an obsessive list maker. Whenever things go right or wrong, he makes a list. That is how we have his lists about his favorite movies, favorite episodes of his favorite TV show and of course, favorite kind of music, musicians and songs. Since he is unable to bring order in his own life, making lists about virtually everything gives this illusion that he has everything under control, although that is far from the truth.
His latest list is about his “top five most memorable split-ups”. Unable to cope with rejection, he makes a list about women who hurt him the most in his life, starting from when he was about 12 up to now. This is when we find out that he is not an adolescent but a grown up man. Top five lists are his solution to everything, whenever things go wrong, he makes a list.

When we look at the novel more closely, we realise that most of his lists are the ones about his favourite bands, songs and music albums. Rob Flemming is crazy about music. Music is the measure for everything in his life, that is how he ended up with a record shop called Championship Vynil and with two of his best friends Barry and d**k, who are just as a obsessed and childish like he himself is. The three of them judge people according to the amount of records they own and the kind of music they listen to. If someone does not have at least five hundred records, that person is not a person at all. This brings us to Rob’s gigantic record collection, which he rearranges every time something monumental happens in his life, like for example his break up with Laura. He can remember the dates when he purchased every album he owns, yet he cannot remember words to tell his girlfriend he oves her. Music dominates his life, makes him feel safe and secure. In every other aspect of his life, he considers himself a failure, even his record shop which barely provides him enough income to survive. So when Laura leaves him, he just burries himself among his records and into music which was there before Laura. He cannot understand that there are other things in life than just exclusively music. He shows his emotions only when he is home alone and listens to “angry songs about women” whenever he is dumped. Instead of showing his emotions like all grown up people do, he chooses to hide them like adolescents. He is also very selfish, everything revolves around poor, insecure and rejected Rob. It does not matter that he hurts other people around him with his attitude, only what he thinks and likes matters. The same goes for Barry and d**k.All three of them judge people according to what they like and not what are those people like. In the attempt not to fall into the pattern of a boring and unfulfilled life, the three of them try to preserve their rebellious attitude by judging everything and anything according to the standards set by their favorite musicians. By doing so, they end up living in the margins of their own lives.

The turning point of Rob’s life is when he realises that he cannot live without Laura. He again, shows behaviour of an adolescent when he calls Laura but whenever Ian (Laura’s new boyfriend) answers, he hangs up.
When Laura’s father dies, Rob changes. He realises that not only his life matters. He realises that he cannot continue to live the way he lived up to that point. He tries to make a list about what he would like to do, which professions attract him. What a surprise, four things out of the five are related to music. After Laura returns to him, Rob gradually starts watching music in a different way and after he meets some of Laura’s friends who do not own five hundred records, as a matter of fact they listen to music that Barry and d**k would characterize as trash, but still they are very nice people, Rob realises that there is more to life than just music. Music enriches life, but life does not revolve around music. He is the happiest when he is surrounded by music but music should be only there to make life more beautiful, not to be the measure for all things in it.

In the end, we can see that Rob, Barry and d**k grow up, in the sense that they still have jobs related to music, but they perceive it in a different, more mature way. They take the best out of both : life and music.

We can conclude that music inspired the lives both of the author and his characters, and that we, the readers, can identify ourselves with the entire story. This can make us realise that literature is there to be enjoyed and cherished in every aspect of our life.