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This book held the double attraction of being a football fan's memoir, and being specifically the memoir of an ARSENAL fan. Ever since I discovered club football, I have been an Arsenal fan, and while I cannot claim to be as fanatical as Hornby, I too find that I cannot relinquish my support of the Gunners.
I have to agree with the many blurbs I have read about this book that it is "a small classic", at least in the genre of sports memoirs, even though it is written by a fan, not a player. In many ways, the perspective of the fan makes it worth reading more, because Hornby uses the exploration of his Arsenal obsession as a window into more serious issues of football and life. His insights into the hooliganism of the 70s and 80s, culminating in the Hillsborough disaster, were interesting and enlightening. His explorations of his development as a person, through the experience, at the same time communal and individual, of football spectating were especially intriguing. One of my own personal theories of explanation for many of the problems of our modern world come down to our collective and personal immaturities, and I think Hornby's book sheds some light on this — it is an explanation of his own maturation process as seen through his obsession. Even though he does some serious maturing in both his personal life and his sporting life, in the end he still remains somewhat immature in his inability to relinquish his obsession, forcing even his closest friends to adapt their lives to his obsession. I would be hypocritical to cast this as too great failing, however, seeing how I suffer from the same, albeit in a much smaller degree since I may never see Arsenal play live in my lifetime, immaturity.
The book also gave me the opportunity to reflect on my own football obsession. For Hornby, it was his visit to Arsenal’s match against Stoke City that ignited his fire for football and Arsenal. For me, it was the 1990 World Cup, which I watched on the Spanish channel, which. I had played little league soccer, but like so many American youths, that hardly had an effect on me after I stopped playing. My personal interests in the world beyond America, the same interest which had also made me a bicycle racing fan starting with the 1987 Tour de France, hit head on with the spectacle of Italia ’90. This was all in the pre-Internet days of globalization, so my only chance to delve further into the world of international soccer was to find a trendy bookstore which carried European soccer magazines – not so easy in Phoenix, Arizona. I would try to guess when the next issue would be put on the shelf, usually guessing wrong once or twice in my enthusiasm. I read every word of those issues, most more than once, but what I liked most were the league tables in the back of the issue – which of course were hopelessly outdated by the time they got to me. It just so happened that Arsenal won the 1990-91 English First Division title, and that is probably how I became an Arsenal fan. I was also attracted to Barcelona, Milan, Ajax, and others (I figured I should have a favorite club in each country), particularly those clubs which had players from the countries I had seen on Spanish television. Somehow, the Arsenal fixation stuck. Not being English, and thus having no local club (I loved Hornby’s account of his experience watching Arsenal play at his “home” club, Reading), I was free to choose any club to support. I think the idea of a club whose name wasn’t particularly associated with a city (like Liverpool, or Manchester United, or Newcastle – boring!), also appealed to me for some reason. I was fortunate in my choice, I guess, since Arsenal have been one of the premier teams of the Premiership in the almost two decades I have been following them. I haven’t had to experience such things as relegation (OK, no Arsenal fan has had to experience that since 1913), fighting to avoid relegation, or floundering in mid-table mediocrity for years on end. I couldn’t have known that when I glommed on to them in 1991, though. I appreciated the opportunity that Hornby offered me to reflect on my own fanhood and maturity.
RPC
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