Ten Years in the Tub
Read Ten Years in the Tub Online
Authors: Nick Hornby
also by nick hornby
Fever Pitch
High Fidelity
About a Boy
Speaking with the Angel
(editor)
How to Be Good
Songbook
The Polysyllabic Spree
A Long Way Down
Housekeeping vs. the Dirt
Slam
An Education
Juliet, Naked
Shakespeare Wrote for Money
More Baths Less Talking
a division of
M
C
SWEENEY'S
849 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
Copyright © 2003â2013 Nick Hornby
Cover design by Dan McKinley
Cover illustration by Daniel Fishel
All rights reserved, including right of reproduction in whole or part in any form.
These pieces appeared between September 2003 and June 2013 in the
Believer
magazine.
e-ISBN: 978-1-944211-15-8
Contents
Introduction: A Note from Jess Walter
Some ground rules; predictions for a baby's future employment; the opinions of grown-up critics
; Legally Blonde
The embodiment of a cultural obsession; re-reading in the face of mortality; empty threats of violence
Unfinished, abandoned, abandoned, unfinished; the appearance of the Polysyllabic Spree; a zealous gleam
Clarification about lost Victorian classics; overrated and peripheral skills; living with an autistic child; advice on smoking
A modest celebration; the pram in the hall; in praise of the vernacular; jokes about commas; a fearful bashing
Plans for a carcass; Cultural Fantasy Boxing League; an effort to get back on course; the young Flaubert
Utter rubbish; a truth bent out of shape; unkind words about Amazon reviewers; upcoming Dickensian nutrition
The secret of good writing; a guy who shouts “Goroo!” a lot; a long, lank skeleton hand; drippy Dora's bloody dog
The Croatian sex lady; the way middle-class people spend their time; a pregnancy scare; the support net; when Fischer played Spassky
A visually uninteresting family tree; nipples not left alone; a taste for hopelessly bleak Eastern European humor
A new baby; consumer fear; the appeal of the reappearing hero; the fourth-worst night of your life; a very pithy suicide note
The Jesuit thing; several mistakes; finger-steepling and sharks in the same book; a new best friend
Sex with cousins; Yorkshiremen; some clever-dick reviewer; the particularities of English Marxists
Presumptions regarding cricket; Chekhov's quotidian life; advice that holds good even now; a lovely little mongrel doggie
Nick Hornby's Preface to the Second Column Collection,
Housekeeping vs. The Dirt
(2006)
Nick Hornby on what he's learned about reading from the Polysyllabic Spree, of all people
The story so far; the Kingston Trio in curious company; Islington dinner parties; a totally original sentence
Weasel words; a thoughtful and engaging website; the inevitable
Incredibles
cash-ins; an elite cabal; Bob the astronaut
Ednit; a quease-inducing trend; a spoiler alert; the only problem with the Labour government; Gogol's shoes
Surprising action in Borders; respective tastes in bird books; some things that have the mucus; Greil Marcus on the Pet Shop Boys
An excruciating purchase; a perfect black-body sphere; the announcement of the theme of the month
Rules made by pompous twits; an astonishing hush; ongoing disciplinary troubles; a surprisingly juicy book
Clearing up a few things; dismal brevity; an interesting philosophical debate; bullishness and self-aggrandizement
Shame; the Holy Grail of this column found; some very specific pomposities; the ways in which a man can kid himself
A question of comic judgment; attractive Kryptonite ashtrays; impatience with literary fiction; gay abandon
A lot of stuff about farting and wanking; Major Reading Experiences; Jay Gatsbergen and David Copperbottom
A new tradition; Puff Diddle; jolly Ukrainian songs; defining the beginning of sexual intercourse; our impending death
Comparisons with Nikki Sixx; sea-creature combos; the price of egg burritos in America; use of the first-person plural
Notes on a shelving system; the English equivalent of Oprah; musings on a lunar module; unintentional comic élan
A very grim month; brotherhood on the road; histrionics from Abraham Lincoln; Arsenal makes the semifinals
Crushing disappointment; life in Mississippi; stuffier compatriots; small beer; the fruits of a Southern kick; clumsy crabs
Opinions about scientists; clever cynics; the flop and bawl; a spousal downgrade; the worth of weddings and the World Cup
A scary woman; visiting with permafrost experts; an offer from ExxonMobil; toothless writers' unions
Endless craving for misery; a double burial; experimental novels from Slovenia; advice on how to deal with favorites
The musical taste of iPods; reconsidering dated smut; thoughts on tinned food; devout Catholic wives
Breakfast Frappuccinos; bacon-flavored potato chips; effortless use of the American vernacular; lippy kids
Index entries on Greil Marcus; life behind the Berlin Wall; antinomians; up with fiction, down with facts
The end of the world; kitchen gizzard experiments; a passable Mick Jagger impersonation; a blank-verse novel about werewolves
Defending the honor of a pink book; the death of God; ten adult books that aren't boring; weird chimes
Helpful cake analogies; hamstring trouble; unreadable Marxist pamphlets; a middle-class twat; doublethink
A fact-finding mission; sex education; writers with an eye on posterity; a sun-lounger in France; lovable Millennials
Learning to read; a state of bolshiness; a hydrocephalic weakling; cricketers; Titmus, F. J.; hints on a proposed lordship
Stuff he's been watching; misery memoirs; unpleasant people doing unkind things; a fascist-killing machine
; Juno
backlash
The fate of a man tired of books; an increase of snazz; the delivery of an unsporting thumping; mortgage payments on boxes
Specialization on
Doctor Dolittle;
breakfast made by a chimp; tolerance of a bare breast; a temporary farewell
Learning from eHow; the old days; nude tableaux vivants; failed moneymaking schemes; delicate moral complications
An invitation to the Oscars; iconic NHS spectacle styles; the postwar Labour government; LitCologne
Advice from the Brits; tragicomedy; the Lost Booker Prize; a novel-shaped Manhattan; a pisseur de copie
The return of the Scientist of the Month award; small males; possible roles for Miley Cyrus; words from Lorne Michaels
Painfully cold sponsored parties; a hunky bad boy; Negative Twenty Questions; the moments on which a life turns
Shakespeare's most Tarantinoesque works; instructions on making yogurt; the time before funk; the Mau Mau uprising
Literary fattism; sick burns by Dickens's contemporaries; the difference between Scottish and Irish; Bose headphones
Postman Pat; an MP3 of Elizabeth Bishop; diarrhea in the book; the universal love of Céline Dion; good goals and bad goals
Victimhood; characters who are quite clearly creeps; a gift from the president; cells that grow like kudzu
New forms of inadequacy; married bliss; curious descriptors for lovemaking; the Dillon Panthers; homework
A worthy opponent; the Hawaiians' need for the Bible; the favorite television program of Mr. Gum; a bald assertion
A certain yen; a surprising anecdote; incomprehensible improbability; a man possessing the necessary anxiety; required reading
A string of presumptions; the definition of
monogamy;
Democracy Versus Hot Sex; an ode to Body Shop Vanilla Shower Gel
Chopsticks; an example of womanizing both real and prodigious; the gray North Sea; an endorsement of the Waboba ball
Everybody's favorite literary biographer; the posher papers; old tosh; Marshalsea debtors' prison; the blacking factory
A lemon-firing bazooka; unbearable quirk; WWOOFers; instances of transgressive and sinister sexual chaos
A second chance for Sade; plastic carrier bag as madeleine substitute; taunting the fact-checkers; friendship with Woody Allen
The definition of
creative professional;
an epiphanic right-hemisphere production; a theory regarding nonfiction books
Passing the point of concern; penal reform; the notion of the second longhand draft; a month of fictional bravery
The future for writers; a frustrating imagined dialogue; Fitzgerald's rate; a gum-snap young-adult voice
A personal library; the no-snark rule; a “meh” face; the end of the London Olympics; vital supplies
Assorted woo-hoos; the fashionable Rod Stewart; a very common human propensity; a Christlike alter ego
Casting notes; the transcendence of one's subject; disappointment regarding orgies and uzis; a very long series of questions
Asshole paranoia; quantifying the delusions of Kanye West; “Cheat Sheet” and
PopEater;
uses for a Wonder Bread bag