<commit_before>---
layout: blog
category: blog
published: true
splash: "http://placehold.it/1600x500"
tags: 
  - "null"
title: Late to High Fidelity
---

## Late to the Party

-Reviews of things you already know about-

_I can only assume that like me most people don’t have time to watch, read, or listen to every bit of content that gets put into the world. Things inevitably fall through the cracks, good things. This series will follow the greatest hits of things I’ve missed over the years._

**This week I’ll be talking about High Fidelity** (the book…)

Like most things that were popular in 1995 (<NAME>, <NAME>’s fringe, Pogs) you have probably already heard about High Fidelity. Like me, you might have already seen the movie before and should probably know the two pieces of conventional logic which make the novel a must read. Firstly the obvious, it’s a book and the book is always better than the film. Secondly, it’s British and the British version is always better than the American knock-off. If you disagree with this I’m unlikely to argue, but all the same if you were to tell me that there is an originating British book of an American film that I enjoyed … I’ll probably at least consider reading it.

I found this story to be highly engaging. The protagonist is a man going through a break up with his long-term girlfriend, and the first half of the book is basically just a collection of lies he’s telling himself to deal. He makes lists of the most damaging things that have happened to him, worst break ups inter-mixed with lists of albums, and keeps unintentionally returning to his ex-girlfriend while trying to leave her out. As both a man and as someone who has concocted a complex house of lies for himself to live in, I found this both highly relatable and a good way to tell a story which is entrenched in emotion. Our hero is a classic man, in the binary sense, and his emotional denials are teased out into the open by a wealth of flashbacks and list-making. I found this to be a wonderful story telling method, as it managed to be so evocative of the characters environment and history, whilst still leaving the imperfect nature of reality there to connect with and ultimately laugh at.

It was a great call to make this into a film given that the story is mostly told by the characters almost compulsive list making. I remember the first time I saw the film, and in a word it was cool. As a lover of music I remember thinking that <NAME> really got it, and his literary counterpart does as well, it just appears a little sadder when you’re presented with the additional detail of the novel. This is all to say that you lose quite a bit of the immersion into this bloke’s way of thinking in the transition to screen, and although the film is still quite good, you do miss out on some of what I feel makes the novel so compelling. It’s an inadequate substitution, but it’s a good piece in its own right. Speaking of immersion, this really is a ‘warts and all’ story, and some of the flashes of rage, embarrassment, etc. that you get are very relatable. I found myself quite embarrassed to admit that I have felt similar ways at points in my life.

Obviously when you show this level of emotional depth in a novel it’s impossible to connect with all of it, and quite a lot of the content is out of date. People rarely make others mix tapes now and I’d never even heard of anyone re-stacking their record collection over and over to deal with their pain (iTunes is a little too functional for it to be much of a respite I imagine), all the same I think how linked it is to the time it was written in is extremely charming. It’s unlikely that Hornby knew that he would be doing that when he wrote it, although that’s one of the great things about people’s relationships with music; it reflects the listener’s personality at a point in time and can draw them back into it.

I would advise that anyone give it a read, it’s short and well written, and if you really dig it feel free to send me a mixtape of how it made you feel.
-Sam

<commit_msg>Updated 2013-06-16-hello-again.md<commit_after>---
layout: blog
category: blog
published: true
splash: "http://placehold.it/1600x500"
tags: 
  - "null"
title: Late to High Fidelity
---

## Late to the Party

### Reviews of things you already know about

_I can only assume that like me most people don’t have time to watch, read, or listen to every bit of content that gets put into the world. Things inevitably fall through the cracks, good things. This series will follow the greatest hits of things I’ve missed over the years._


**This week I’ll be talking about High Fidelity** (the book…)


Like most things that were popular in 1995 (<NAME>, <NAME>’s fringe, Pogs) you have probably already heard about High Fidelity. Like me, you might have already seen the movie before and should probably know the two pieces of conventional logic which make the novel a must read. Firstly the obvious, it’s a book and the book is always better than the film. Secondly, it’s British and the British version is always better than the American knock-off. If you disagree with this I’m unlikely to argue, but all the same if you were to tell me that there is an originating British book of an American film that I enjoyed … I’ll probably at least consider reading it.


I found this story to be highly engaging. The protagonist is a man going through a break up with his long-term girlfriend, and the first half of the book is basically just a collection of lies he’s telling himself to deal. He makes lists of the most damaging things that have happened to him, worst break ups inter-mixed with lists of albums, and keeps unintentionally returning to his ex-girlfriend while trying to leave her out. As both a man and as someone who has concocted a complex house of lies for himself to live in, I found this both highly relatable and a good way to tell a story which is entrenched in emotion. Our hero is a classic man, in the binary sense, and his emotional denials are teased out into the open by a wealth of flashbacks and list-making. I found this to be a wonderful story telling method, as it managed to be so evocative of the characters environment and history, whilst still leaving the imperfect nature of reality there to connect with and ultimately laugh at.


It was a great call to make this into a film given that the story is mostly told by the characters almost compulsive list making. I remember the first time I saw the film, and in a word it was cool. As a lover of music I remember thinking that <NAME> really got it, and his literary counterpart does as well, it just appears a little sadder when you’re presented with the additional detail of the novel. This is all to say that you lose quite a bit of the immersion into this bloke’s way of thinking in the transition to screen, and although the film is still quite good, you do miss out on some of what I feel makes the novel so compelling. It’s an inadequate substitution, but it’s a good piece in its own right. Speaking of immersion, this really is a ‘warts and all’ story, and some of the flashes of rage, embarrassment, etc. that you get are very relatable. I found myself quite embarrassed to admit that I have felt similar ways at points in my life.


Obviously when you show this level of emotional depth in a novel it’s impossible to connect with all of it, and quite a lot of the content is out of date. People rarely make others mix tapes now and I’d never even heard of anyone re-stacking their record collection over and over to deal with their pain (iTunes is a little too functional for it to be much of a respite I imagine), all the same I think how linked it is to the time it was written in is extremely charming. It’s unlikely that Hornby knew that he would be doing that when he wrote it, although that’s one of the great things about people’s relationships with music; it reflects the listener’s personality at a point in time and can draw them back into it.


I would advise that anyone give it a read, it’s short and well written, and if you really dig it feel free to send me a mixtape of how it made you feel.

-Sam


{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.0337449565961609, 'fraction_numerical': 0.003667930064800098, 'mean_word_length': 4.083903045369795, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 9, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 9, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
{'dir': 'git-commits-cleaned', 'id': '7198444', 'n_tokens_mistral': 2011, 'n_tokens_neox': 1919, 'n_words': 1473}