By the way, you might want to pick up a copy of the latest New Yorker (the one with the Oscar cartoon on the cover) and read "The Beards" by Jonathan Lethem. It reads a bit like Nick Hornby, given that everything that talks about 1970s teenage pop culture infatuation reads like Hornby these days, except that Lethem is less funny and observant than unbearably sad. There are pop cultural judgments that are spot on, of course, like the observation that Barry Lyndon is a great movie but A Clockwork Orange is disappointing. (Anyone who loves Barry Lyndon but not A Clockwork Orange is someone I'd gladly take out for a beer.) I also love the paragraph that ends with these lines:

My declaring a writer or musician or director my favorite, it seemed, contained a kind of suicide pact for my own enthusiasm. The disappointment artist was me.

"The Beards," like Hornby's work, is full of moments of surprising recognition, which leave me grateful for their existence. These are also emotional moments that I don't understand, at least not yet, and which I irrationally hope to never understand, although I suspect that I may have no choice. I'm being circumspect on purpose. If you read the essay, you'll know what I mean.