Nick Hornby is smart, very smart. And funny, very funny. About 20 years ago, the British cultural critic, novelist, and Oscar-nominated screenwriter teamed up with the good people at the Believer and began writing a sharp-witted and entertaining column, Stuff I’ve Been Reading, largely devoted to literary criticism. Rosamond Lehmann in Vegas is the latest collection from his column.
Hornby’s installments begin with a list of books he’s read, say 5 or 6 titles, and a list of those he’s purchased, perhaps 6 to 10 others. They can be old or new. Hornby then offers amusing commentary—“I try to find works of fiction, I promise, but it’s like pushing a wonky shopping trolley round a supermarket”—and insightful criticism: Vivian Gornick’s “Fierce Attachments is an extraordinary, scalding book, with a fraught, bitter, verbally violent, frighteningly truthful mother-daughter relationship running right down its spine.” His tastes run the gamut from biography to music (he’s the author of High Fidelity, after all) to, sometimes, contemporary fiction. His appetite for books of all stripes comes with a gentle respect for their authors. Hornby indicates those he’s lost interest in with “[Unnameable Novel 1] (abandoned),” sparing the anonymous author some indignity.
Rosamond Lehmann in Vegas contains Hornby’s columns from late 2017 to early 2022. During this time, the Believer was sold by McSweeney’s to the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute, which is run by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In October 2021, UNLV announced it would cease publication of the magazine after the February/March 2022 issue. Later that spring, the Believer was sold to Paradise Media, a digital marketing firm, before being reacquired by McSweeney’s. Throughout much of this lurching about, Hornby continued to delight his fans with his own peripatetic musings—of the entertaining and insightful variety.
We caught up with Hornby to ask him three questions on the eve of Rosamond Lehmann in Vegas’s publication. Join us for Alta Live on November 6, when we’ll ask Hornby about his wonderful new book, his life as a critic, and his love of music.
How did you decide on the title, Rosamond Lehmann in Vegas? Lehmann was a Bloomsbury novelist whose books, apparently, you did not encounter until late 2018. And as far as I know, she never had the occasion to visit Las Vegas.
It was the disconnect! The Believer went to Vegas for the years covered in this book, and it was amusing to me, in retrospect, to be writing about this very English, very midcentury novelist and sending the resulting column to Sin City.
You began with the Believer in 2003 and in an early column referred to its editors as “the Polysyllabic Spree, the eighty-four chillingly ecstatic young men and women who run this magazine.” What was the editorial team like during the Las Vegas years? Did your approach to the column change during that time?
Nothing has ever changed. Personnel, yes—my editor during that time was Dan Gumbiner, who is an excellent novelist in his own right. But the Believer has been a light-touch dream to write for. I started the column not long after quitting an occasional gig at the New Yorker. We all love the New Yorker, but their editing process made me want to weep. And I had stopped sounding like myself. The style I landed on for the Believer sounded like me, at least, and nobody wanted to mute that voice.
Alta Journal covers the arts and culture of California and the West. Which California writers and books do you admire?
I suspect it’s very hard for native Californians to understand the hold the state has on the English imagination. If you like music, then there are other states and cities that work in the same way, of course—Memphis, Nashville, Chicago, Alabama, Louisiana. But California loomed very large in our imagination. Laurel Canyon, Haight-Ashbury, Hollywood, the light, the surf, the sun.
So, yes, there was California in my literary diet. I’d say the first ingredient was Chandler. He helped create the mystery of and obsession with Los Angeles. I read him when I was in my teens. And I discovered Nathanael West not long afterwards. Then Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train, and Dashiell Hammett, and Joan Didion, and Raymond Carver… I honestly wanted to be a Californian author much more than I wanted to be a British author.•
Blaise Zerega is Alta Journal's editorial director. His journalism has appeared in Conde Nast Portfolio (deputy editor and part of founding team), WIRED (managing editor), the New Yorker, Forbes, and other publications. Additionally, he was the editor of Red Herring magazine, once the bible of Silicon Valley. Throughout his career, he has helped lead teams small and large to numerous honors, including multiple National Magazine Awards. He attended the United States Military Academy and New York University and received a Michener Fellowship for fiction from the Texas Center for Writers.
