Nick Hornby compares and contrasts the lives and careers of two world-famous artists who greatly inspire him: the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens and the 20th/21st century recording artist Prince, in an attempt to find out what qualities these two remarkable creators possessed that make them stand apart from their peers, in his short but wonderful book, Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius.
I’ve read a few Dickens books but I wouldn’t call myself a huge fan even though I didn’t dislike any of them - I just don’t find him that easy a writer to pick up and effortlessly lose yourself in - and I’m definitely not a Prince fan. But I am a Nick Hornby fan, particularly his nonfiction, and Dickens and Prince is easily his best book in years.
It’s not the kind of book that compares the two by looking at any uncanny coincidences they share but they did have a lot of similarities. Both had horrible childhoods (terrible parents, poverty), both became successful in their twenties and only became more famous and successful with age, both had weaknesses for women, both had a massive and lasting impact on culture, and both died from overwork (yes, Prince died of a drug overdose, but it was from a prescription pill addiction that originated from a hip injury he got from dancing during his shows for so many years, so… kinda?) at roughly the same age (Dickens at 58, Prince at 57 - two months shy of his 58th birthday).
As compelling as Hornby’s truncated biographies of these creators are, by far the biggest impression this book will leave on you is the insane productivity of both. Dickens wrote over 4 million words during his novel-writing career, not counting letters (of which there are an ever-increasing number of books thousands of pages long collecting them all), journalism or editing.
Prince produced dozens of records during his life (as well as writing songs for other artists) and left behind an estimated 5000-8000 unreleased songs that a dedicated team of archivists are diligently collecting and releasing slowly. One bizarre factoid is that, in addition to seducing them, he recorded an album overnight with some of the women he brought back to his house - that’s how effortless creation was for the guy (and it was just women he slept with, despite his androgynous looks/statements suggesting otherwise)!
It’s amazing how little planning went into both of their work. Ok, I’m sure a lot of Prince’s unreleased stuff, and a number of released songs, aren’t very good, and, similarly, Dickens had his share of forgettable dross (Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Our Mutual Friend), but they also produced masterpieces via the same creative process of making it up as they went along with minimal-to-no planning.
We’ve all heard of how to achieve mastery in something you need to dedicate yourself to 10,000 hours of practice first, but Hornby suggests that, to become a genius at something, you need 10,000 hours of consumption as well. Dickens read voraciously and went to the theatre constantly while Prince listened to everything and took it all apart to understand how it worked - they were fans of the artforms not just creators working within them. Although, ultimately, there’s no real answer for explaining either artists’ genius - the sum total of their life experiences led them to become the way they were, 10,000 hours of practice/consumption or otherwise.
You could argue that where Hornby’s comparisons come unstuck are that Prince did his most iconic and best-loved work in his 20s while Dickens produced some of his best work in his 20s (Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby) but continued making big hits throughout much of his life - A Christmas Carol and David Copperfield in his 30s, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations in his 40s, and… well, nothing quite as notable in his 50s. Whereas Prince never reached his 1980s heyday (Purple Rain, Sign o’ the Times) afterwards.
But I’m glad Hornby paired the two because the book wouldn’t have worked without one or the other. I was more interested in the Dickens side of things but there’s a lot of enjoyable anecdotes about Prince here and he was every bit the accomplished artist that Dickens was. The two artists’ awe-inspiring lives complement and balance the book nicely - and I liked that the book is designed in purple, of course.
If, like me, you’ve missed Hornby’s Believer columns, where he wrote about what he had been reading recently, and miss his unique insight and enthusiasm for art appreciation, Dickens and Prince is a welcome return to that informative and entertaining style of writing he’s so good at. It takes a particular kind of genius to notice that nobody’s done this kind of book before and that particular genius is Nick Hornby’s own - Dickens and Prince is definitely one of the year’s highlights.
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