My People

The Who's album WHO by Peter Blake

Sometimes you benefit from reading a book by seeing a crystalized idea that you've been thinking about. Nick Hornby, in From Dickens and Prince (2022) does this by situating his subjects among "My People."

My People the people I have thought about a lot, over the years, the artists who have shaped me, inspired me, made me think about my own work. I have scores of people like that, influences and role models and heroes. Galton and Simpson, Donald Fagen, Preston Sturges, Barbra Streisand, Robert Altman, Pauline Kael, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen Sondheim, Mavis Staples, Arsène Wenger, Joan Didion, Anne Tyler, Jerry Seinfeld, Rickie Lee Jones, Aretha Franklin, Thierry Henry, Elizabeth Strout, Raymond Carver, Frederick Exley, Joe Henderson, Lorrie Moore, Edward Hopper, Liam Brady, Peter Blake, Bruce Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, Duke Ellington, Elizabeth McCracken, Larry McMurtry, Roddy Doyle, Tom Verlaine, Peter Wolf, Dave Eggers, Al Green, and many, many others. I won't go into detail about what they have all meant to me: sometimes it was their taste, sometimes their thinking, or their soul, or attention to detail, or audacity, or comic timing, or arrogance, or commitment, or bravery, or the way they have lived their lives.

I like the raw listing of the names: these are people who meant something to Hornby.  And then I like how Hornby names what "meant" could be: taste, thinking, soul, attention to detail, audacity, comic timing, arrogance, commitment, bravery, lifestyle.  

• Arseny Wenger is a UK Football coach of Arsenal.
• Galton and Simpson were sitcom/comedy writers in the UK.
• Peter Blake was a British Pop artist who also did album covers like Sgt. Pepper and the 2019 Who album above.  (Who knew that the Who had a 2019 album?) 
• Pauline Kael was a film critic known for her personal reviews.
• Frederick Exley is an American novelist who was nominated for the 1969 National Book Award.  Never heard of him!
• Liam Brady was a British football player... and pundit.
• Preston Sturges was a American screenwriter of screwball comedies.
• Thiery Henry was a French football striker and currently a coach.

This reminds me of the advice that we should each of us write 6 books - lists, observations, etc. I think this idea is from the Paris Review. 

In a smaller sense this reminds me of (makes me think of) a list - “10 lists everyone should make” - as a kind of mental exercise. It’s not just “my heroes.”  You would need to list the people and the criteria. People that I admire. That I’m inspired by.