copyright 2009, The Washington Post WASHINGTON -- Busy Nick Hornby. New novel. New screenplay. Songwriter in his spare time. Interviewer. Interviewee. Dad of three. And yet here he is, strolling in for a chat in a room off the hotel bar, looking relaxed, refreshed, full of cheer. It's not quite what you expect from a man who has made something of a career of exquisitely crafted angst. Well, why not the good vibe? 'An Education,' the movie for which he wrote the screenplay and which his wife co-produced, has been flooded with critical praise, earned raves (and whispers of Oscar) for the performance of its young star, Carey Mulligan, and scored the top audience prize for foreign films at Sundance earlier this year. And with its prickly humor, warm spirit and rock-and-roll-obsessive theme, Hornby's new book, 'Juliet, Naked,' has fans and reviewers alike comparing it favorably to 'High Fidelity,' his breakout novel of 14 years ago. If all that weren't enough, the 52-year-old Brit has also been having fun of late collaborating on songs with power-pop tunesmith Ben Folds. An album has been threatened. So, Mr. Hornby, tell us a little, then, about this golden touch of yours. 'Yeah, well, it doesn't really feel like anything to do with me,' Hornby says with a laugh. 'When I look back on the actual creation of them, all I can really remember is playing solitaire on my computer. It's not like I enter this zone where stuff pours out and I'm pleased with it. It feels like I've smoked myself sick and played too many computer games and then write in these frustrating little bursts. The touch doesn't feel so golden in my little office.' There you have it. One of the more successful authors of the past two decades writes between extended breaks of cigarettes and video games. Take heart, slackers! But of course the bald-as-a-button Hornby, unassuming in his jeans, T-shirt and dark blazer, is being a bit humble about all this success. After all, three of his books have been turned into movies. One, 'Fever Pitch,' has been turned into two movies. Hornby doesn't love talking about his books; 'I think it's really hard to cheerlead for your own work unless you're an ass,' he says with a laugh. But he is quite thrilled to talk about his new film -- which he has seen seven or eight times -- because it was a collaborative process. He worked closely with his wife, Amanda Posey, and the director, the actors and the entire crew. The movie, which opens nationally on Friday, presents the tale of a 16-year-old girl in repressed 1960s England looking for something more out of life than the predictable stultifying future that seemingly awaits. There's a high skeevy quotient in that the young heroine is seduced by a creepy, much older con artist. And yet the movie is also about taking a journey. And taking chances. And battling fiercely against the mundane. Hornby adapted the screenplay from a memoir by British journalist Lynn Barber, and it was a project he fought hard to make happen. Where other of his film projects have floundered in development, Hornby stuck with this one in part because he identified with the main character and her desire to flee the dull suburbs and take part in the vibrant life of the city. 'The more I thought about it, the more I thought about it as a different version of `Fever Pitch,' ' he says. 'Instead of football, it's culture, I guess, and music in Paris and jazz clubs and art. ... It's that bright teen-ager looking into the city from outside and thinking how the hell am I going to get there. ... It's the same impulse, I think, the same fear that you're going to be stuck where you are.' Though his two latest projects are not related, his new novel 'Juliet, Naked' also presents something of a call to arms against boredom, a warning for those who would simply let life happen to them. The novel is vintage Hornby -- spirited, wry, observant, soul-stirring. Ostensibly about a washed-up songwriter whose mysterious decision to give up performing 20 years earlier has given rise to a cultish clique of hopelessly devoted fans, the novel expands into the familiar Hornbyesque territory of loneliness, melancholy and despair. It might all be unbearable if not for Hornby's razor-sharp, ultimately redemptive humor. If his two latest projects share a seize-the-day theme, they also both express a disappointment with his homeland. 'Yeah, I think that's probably right,' he says when this is pointed out. 'It's different reasons in both cases. It might be something that I'm going through that came out in both of the works without me noticing it. ... The old country comes in for a bashing.' He laughs ruefully. 'It was there in `An Education,' in the original piece. What I saw in her dad was that generation of people that were scared of everything, that wouldn't go anywhere and whose tastes were very set. In `Juliet,' there is a certain English mind-set that gets me down. The can't-do spirit.' A failure of leadership is what Hornby points to as the source of his current unhappiness. 'All the promise of the late '90s, when (Tony) Blair came into power and it felt like a young country again and it had energy, all that has really dissipated. ... For 18 years I was living in a country that was conservative in every way. And all of your hopes are pinned on this shining day in the future where something will change. And the Labor Party, the Labor government, has been so disappointing that you realize it's just politics. It will never be the government that I want to live under. There's nothing to hope for in politics, I don't think.' With a sly smile he adds, 'I guess you guys could go through the same thing.' But enough about politics. A cigarette is calling, and Hornby steps outside for a smoke and a discussion of much more serious issues: the play of Arsenal, his beloved English football club; the differences between American and English comic books; and how to convince your children that you are not at death's door despite being roughly the same age as Michael Jackson. He is an attentive listener and you can't help but note that even as a conversationalist his touch is golden. A quick tour of the States to promote the film awaits and then he's back to London, to the kids, the computer games, the smokes, and the flickers of inspiration that will no doubt result in yet another eagerly anticipated Nick Hornby book and, odds are, a film as well. 