I Heart Nick Hornby

I love Nick Hornby to no end, although I haven't picked up his new collection, "The Polysyllabic Spree" yet. So that makes me a bad fan.

But, McSweeneys (who's publishing the collection), put up an excerpt today. Here's my favorite paragraph, although the whole article is great:

"I know that when it comes to subconscious sexual deviation there's no such thing as coincidence, but I swear I haven't been scouring the bookshops for novels about the acceptable face of incest. I picked up Liars and Saints because it's been blurbed by both Helen Fielding and Philip Roth, and though I enjoyed the book, that conjunction set up an expectation that couldn't ever be fulfilled: sometimes blurbs can be too successful. I was hoping for something bubbly and yet achingly world-weary, something diverting and yet full of lacerating and unforgettable insights about the human condition, something that was fun while being at the same time no fun at all, in a bracing sort of a way, something that cheered me up while making me want to hang myself. In short, I wanted Roth and Fielding to have co-written the book, and poor Maile Meloy couldn't deliver. Liars and Saints is a fresh, sweet-natured first novel, but it's no Nathan Zuckerman's Diary. (Cigarettes—23, attacks of Weltschmerz—141, etc.)"