Funny Girl

adesso mi lancio e lo dico: secondo me una delle cose migliori scritte da Nick Hornby e lo posso dire visto che ho letto tutti i suoi libri tranne un breve racconto.
mi sono divertito, i personaggi principali mi sono piaciuti tantissimo, c'è spazio per delle belle riflessioni sulla vita, sul successo e sui fallimenti. fantastico.

‘I wonder,’ said Dennis carefully, ‘whether there’s a different way of looking at intelligence.’

Whitfield smiled patronizingly.

‘I’m sure there is, these days,’ he said. ‘I’m sure people who work in comedy have found a way of redrawing the boundaries so that they include themselves.’

‘You don’t think comedy can be intelligent?’

‘Some of it can, of course. The new satirical shows are very clever.’

‘But then, they’re written and performed by Cambridge graduates,’ said Dennis.

‘Exactly,’ said Whitfield. ‘Bright chaps.’

‘And what about Shakespeare?’ said Dennis. ‘Much Ado About Nothing and All’s Well That Ends Well and so on?’

‘Ah, I see,’ said Whitfield. ‘Jim and Barbara is Shakespeare, is it? Jolly good.’

‘Shakespeare made ordinary people laugh.’

‘ “Ordinary people”,’ said Whitfield. ‘The last refuge of the scoundrel.’

‘But what’s the difference?’

‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ said Vernon Whitfield, with all the relish of a man who’d lured his opponent into a fatal trap, ‘had its roots in the Italian Renaissance.’

‘Barbara (and Jim) has its roots in the golden age of BBC radio comedy.’

‘I’ll presume you’re being facetious and ignore that,’ said Whitfield.

‘I’m just pointing out that everything has roots,’ said Dennis.

‘Not in the Italian Renaissance,’ said Whitfield.

‘Well, no,’ said Dennis. ‘But you can trace a great deal of pornography back to the Italian Renaissance too.’

He had no idea whether this was true, but it sounded true, and that was good enough. Anyway, it produced a lot of blinking and sweating.

‘And, in any case, Much Ado About Nothing has Shakespeare’s glorious language.’

‘You’ve got me there,’ said Dennis. ‘Let’s hear some of it.’

Whitfield stared at him with panic in his eyes, like a dying Nazi in a war film. Dennis smiled politely. There were long moments of silence.

‘I wonder whether people laughed, not because of the glorious language, but because of Shakespeare’s technical skill,’ said Dennis. ‘The plays are extremely well constructed. And that’s where the intelligence of my writers goes. Into the construction, and the characterization, and –’

‘ “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more”!’ Vernon Whitfield said suddenly. ‘ “Men were always deceitful”!’

‘Marvellous stuff,’ said Dennis. ‘They didn’t call him the Bard for nothing, did they?’

Robert Mitchell laughed.

‘ “Deceivers ever”!’ said Whitfield. ‘Not “always deceitful”.’

‘That’s better,’ said Dennis.

La solita storia dalla provincia alla città per trovare noi stessi. A noi, ragazzi di provincia, ovviamente piace. Il salto temporale delle ultime pagine dagli anni più belli a quelli della vecchiaia ci fa trasalire e ci ricorda di quanto può essere corta una vita pur vivendola appieno.

Credo che non troverò mai più l'Hornby di Alta fedeltà, Un ragazzo o anche solo quello di Non buttiamoci giù. Forse sono cambiata io, forse ormai lui scrive "per forza", ma questo romanzo non mi ha presa per niente. Sebbene affronti anche tematiche delicate, non mi ha coinvolta e i protagonisti mi sono sembrati tutti soltanto abbozzati. Verso la fine migliora, ma resta un libro che credo dimenticherò presto perché non mi ha emozionata e non mi ha lasciato nulla.