Luc Sante on Nick Hornby and Geoffrey O'Brien
" The shock of the new is something they sought between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four, if at all; now, however, a pop song should be like a cold beer on a hot day, with a bit of uplift worked into the transaction. Just as Hornby sets up a straw pop star--who in Eighties fashion applies heavy makeup, among other torts --when he needs a hissable villain to contrast with one of the hard-working, unaffected singer-songwriters he admires, so he crumples everything he finds emotionally or intellectually difficult into a wad and labels it with the damning adjective 'edgy.' Whatever kinds of music this advertising cliche might be applied to Hornby is content to represent it all as assaultive screeching with lyrics about murder, against which he can propose something or other by Teenage Fanclub, 'packed with sunshine and hooks and harmonies and goodwill.' So no problem, then. For that matter, he seems to think that jazz is that velveteen-textured pap you hear in commercials, and classical music is 'something that makes the room smell temporarily different, like a scented candle.' "