"Common People": Realism, Class Difference, and the Male Domestic Sphere in Nick Hornby's Collision with Britpop

My essay analyzes both High Fidelity and selected Britpop songs and videos, and reads these texts within the highly contested field of realism's larger relationship to "what's out there." The essay examines the ways in which Hornby's novel articulates a male domestic sphere and explores values typically associated with the British working class—ones regularly reinforced in 1990s (or "Cool Britannia"-era) texts such as Loaded magazine. Ultimately, I analyze how High Fidelity, like many canonical realist novels, imagines a form of social unity that supersedes the divergent social class "realities" depicted.