Reformed Rocker Shocker: One for the Record Books

So, I just read Juliet, Naked.  I watched the movie first, back before I knew that it was a novel written by Nick Hornby, who also wrote High Fidelity, which was also a book unbeknownst to me.  But enough navel gazing; Juliet, Naked is a delight!  Funny, self-deprecating, and all of those other British things that make you want to wield a teacup.  Here's the skinny:  

Annie and Duncan live in Gooleness, a seaside town populated by geriatrics, and have been together for fifteen years.  Duncan is obsessed with a washed-up, allegedly reclusive American rocker named Tucker Crowe and runs a website dedicated to him.  Annie is sick of Duncan's Tucker obsession.  One day, Duncan receives a never-before-released raw cut of Tucker's most famous album, "Juliet," (hereafter referred to as "Juliet, Naked"), and Annie opens it first, listens to it, and hates it.  Duncan is indignant, all but calling Annie a philistine, and posts a cloying review.  Annie retaliates by writing and posting a scathing review of her own.  Then wonder of wonders, Tucker writes back, beginning the most bizarre love triangle since Little Shop of Horrors.

Before Annie and Tucker know it, they're in an email relationship.  Spilling their guts and having a trans-Atlantic emotional affair or whatever.  Annie is thirty-nine and suddenly depressed about being childless.  Tucker is a sad dad with five kids from four different mothers.  He lets his fans think he's morphed into an angry backwoodsman even though he looks like an accountant.  Tucker is also disgusted by the mythology surrounding his exodus from the music scene, and Annie, well, Annie's just lonely.  Meanwhile, Duncan (What kind of name is that anyway?  It makes me think of one-hit-wonder Duncan Sheik or that dude from Hamlet or, yes, even Duncan Hines) shacks up with a fellow professor, a red herring of a plot device stalling his inevitable shock upon finding out that his ex-ladylove and his hero -- no, make that man crush -- are now pen pals.  

But, as usual, I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let's pause to peruse some of my favorite parts, shall we?

Duncan on reading Annie's review:

"She was better than him in everything but judgment -- the only thing that mattered in the end, but still.  She wrote well, with fluency and humor, and she was persuasive, if you hadn't actually heard the music, and she was likeable.  He tended to be strident and bullying and smark-alecky, even he could see that.  This wasn't what she was supposed to be good at.  Where did that leave him?" (68)

Poor Duncan.  His woman has dared to defy him about his most favorite thing, wittily and winsomely, on the Internet for all to read.  And I love it.  These days, I can't help reading through a feminist lens.  Even though I wrote my college thesis on why Lady Audley was an opportunist as opposed to a victim and used to side with Ross when he said that he and Rachel were on a break.  I guess facing forty has dropped some hard truths on me.  

And now for Tucker's first impression of Gooleness, which amuses me for obvious reasons:

"If he translated some of the ethnic foods into Americans' favorites and swapped a few of the bookies for casinos, he'd be at one of the trashier resorts in New Jersey.  Every now and again, one of Jackson's school friends got dragged off to a seaside town like this, either because the kid's parents had misremembered a vacation from their youth, or because they had failed to spot the romanticism and poetic license in Bruce Springsteen's early albums." (324)

Ah, Jersey.  Always a punching bag.  Or, more to the point, a trash bag.  

Now back to our analysis.

Juliet, Naked isn't just about the -- in this case, incredibly ironic -- ebb and flow of romantic relationships.  It's about art and what it means once artists release it to the world.  For instance, it's hilarious, intrusive, and a little concerning that Duncan and his fellow Crowologists (yes, that's what they call themselves) go to such lengths to research (okay, stalk) Tucker and theorize what he's been up to.  They've put him on such a pedestal that he's no longer a person, and they're willing to worship his worst work.  That said, they're also passionate, and it's their passion that's kept Tucker and his music relevant.  So it's up to Annie to choose between the fanatic and the source of the fanaticism, or, rather, the satellite and the sun.  Duncan's a drip, no question.  But he's a drip who stands for something.  And artist or not, Tucker's got his problems, and not all of them are the sexy kind worthy of lighters.  Annie's ultimate decision says a lot about what she wants out of life and what she's willing to do to get it.

Sounds like girl power hour to me.