Campaign for the American Reader: Six top novels referencing pop music

Friday, October 11, 2019

Robert Haller holds an MFA in fiction from the New School in New York City. He lives in upstate New York. Another Life is his first novel.

At LitHub he tagged "six novels that reference pop music in interesting, effective ways," including:

Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

Undoubtedly, this is still the first book many readers think of when it comes to pop music references in fiction. There are almost as many band references as there are pages, but Hornby gets away with it because of the nature of his narrator. Rob is such a music junkie that it’s become the primary way he relates to other people. He’s the sort of the narrator who will tell the reader his ex-girlfriends’ top five recording artists but not their political or religious convictions. Part of the humor of the book is how much the reader is able to draw from Rob’s insights. Turns out we can learn a lot about a character by knowing her favorite singer is Joni Mitchell. In one particularly funny scene, Rob reorganizes his record collection in the order in which he bought them, which he likens to writing his autobiography without picking up a pen. A major theme of High Fidelity is how much of our identities are wrapped up in the things we like.