Fever Pitch Themes

In English football culture, Nick Hornby suggests in Fever Pitch, there’s a point where fandom crosses over into obsession. To fans, football serves as a form of entertainment and a way to cultivate community—fans enjoy football. Hornby’s classmates and colleagues bond and form friendships over their shared interest in a team or sport. When Hornby watches games, he envies the people he sees in the crowd who talk and laugh, appearing to have a…

Nick Hornby’s obsession with the football team Arsenal begins as a way to bond with his father. Although Hornby later becomes estranged from his father, the notion of football (and sports in general) as a way to connect with others remains. The Arsenal fanbase is often miserable and grouchy, as is Hornby in his adolescence, so he starts going to Arsenal games to have a place where it’s socially acceptable to express misery…

Nick Hornby’s conception of masculinity changes throughout the years of his life Fever Pitch narrates. In England at the time (the 1960s and 1970s), there is a stereotype that football fans are ultra-masculine, and consequently that they are violent and uneducated. It is true at the time that disputes among soccer fans often cause rioting, injuries, and death. In his adolescence, Hornby embraces this stereotype, and he thinks of masculinity as a cluster of…