"I have read books written by people who obviously love football, but that's a different thing entirely; and I have read books written, for want of a better word, about hooligans, but 95 percent of the millions who watch games every year have never hit anyone in their lives. So this is for the rest of us, and for anyone who has wondered what it might be like to be this way ..."

-- Introduction to "Fever Pitch" by Nick Hornby

It was with some expectation that I headed out of Arsenal tube station and toward an Italian restaurant on Northolme Road last fall to meet Nick Hornby. I'd been a fan since his first book, "Fever Pitch," a loving account of the way his home team, Arsenal FC, had been symbolically linked to every significant event in his life, was published in 1992.

"Fever Pitch" spoke to all British men obsessed with football (soccer in America), but for me there had been a special twist: I support the team Tottenham Hotspur. Located barely two miles from each other, Tottenham and Arsenal have been fierce rivals for more than 100 years.

Hornby's second book, "High Fidelity," explored the weird adolescent hangover that seems to strike men in their 30s. It was a sweet and moody meditation on lost loves, fluctuating friendships and a passion for music. By the time "About a Boy" (a novel about fatherhood, responsibility and the struggle to grow up) came out in 1998, it seemed to me that Hornby had produced one novel for each of the most important areas of my life: football, fatherhood and music.

"Some of the players come in here to eat," said Hornby shortly after we arrived. "Arshne Wenger [Arsenal's coach and manager] comes in here after every home game ... It's quite sweet really, because he always gets a round of applause."

Reading Hornby for six years had me feeling like we were old mates, which probably explains why it took me all of a capresi salad and some fusilli with pesto to remember I should probably stop arguing the merits of Tottenham Hotspur's David Ginola over Arsenal's Dennis Bergkamp and record something.

Considering that, at the time we met, Hornby was working on a new novel, selling the screen rights to "About a Boy" to Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions and previewing "High Fidelity," then still in post-production, it was extremely gracious of him to agree to meet me. And considering that not four days earlier Tottenham had beaten Arsenal 2-1 in a typically raucous North London match, he was surprisingly friendly.

Is it easy watching your work reinterpreted on the screen?

There's two answers to that. One, once you take the money then that's that. It's like selling a coat. You can't then say, "I don't want that fat bloke wearing my coat because he doesn't look good in it." You'd just think, Well you sold it, you burke, you took the money. I got paid really well for it and I wanted the money and fine, I don't think I should whinge. The other thing is that I think the books are so unfilmic in a certain way that the only people who want to make films of them do so because they love them, and not because they've seen this "thing" they can pull out of it. I mean what's the big idea of "High Fidelity" where you'd take something and throw the rest away? You'd be left with nothing, a story where a bloke splits up from his girlfriend? Couldn't you have thought of that yourself?

Weren't some basic elements of the book changed in the film, though?

Actually the film of "High Fidelity" is incredibly faithful to the book despite the fact it's been reset in Chicago. John Cusack's in it, he's Rob, and it doesn't make an awful lot of difference to anything. The only thing that's changed is the music.

I would've thought that was integral to the story.

Yeah, except again I take it as part of the personal connection with it. The guys who are doing it see it as a story about themselves, therefore they've transposed their music into it and I appreciate the spirit of that. I think the only thing that's holding it up right now is they're arguing with each other about the soundtrack. Part of their thing with the whole project was getting their favorite obscure bands into the soundtrack, which seems in keeping with the spirit of it all anyway.

Were you able to remain involved in the project?

They've been incredibly solicitous all the way through. I've been invited to see a couple of cuts, I'm going to see another one tomorrow and they've tried to keep me as involved as I want to be. But, frankly, I quite enjoy the distance. I also think with those things you're either completely in or completely out, and if you're in that takes up a lot of time and I want to do other stuff. It's been directed by Stephen Frears, who's English anyway, so there's an English sensibility looking after it.

Are you still interested in writing screenplays after "Fever Pitch?"

Actually, the three of us who made "Fever Pitch" -- writer, director and producer -- got a development deal with Miramax, and this will be the first film to come out of that. It's about an American band in the U.K. where the lead singer walks out halfway through and ends up in a small seaside town. The other one is a sort of gimmicky romantic comedy. I always liked those films like "Big" and "Groundhog Day" and I wanted to try one myself. At the moment I'm developing that with John Madden, who directed "Shakespeare in Love," but he's got loads of things on the go. I don't know if he'd end up directing it, but he's helping me with the script every couple of months.

Does writing a screenplay feel like taking a break from your real job?

Sort of. I really enjoyed doing "Fever Pitch" and I really enjoyed working with people. It occurred to me that I'm really too sociable to want to sit on my own in a room for two years, which is what you do when you write a book. I've got a couple of things on the go right now. Original screenplays. "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy" are both going to be films -- well you know "High Fidelity" is coming out soon -- I didn't do the screenplay for that. So the last year has been spent doing drafts of two different screenplays which are very different from each other.

You created some dead-on depictions of London males, especially with "High Fidelity." Do you find people saying that to you when you're doing readings in America?

No, not really. Englishness doesn't really seem to come into it. "High Fidelity," for example, works for any Western country because there are guys everywhere who are obsessed with popular music. In Scandinavia the books have done well, Italy the same, Germany very well and Spain not at all. I wonder if there's something about Catholic countries where a lot of people still live with their mums and stuff and I'm not sure if they get it; the endless chopping and changing of relationships, the agonizing over what you're doing with your life. I think paradoxically they've worked so well here because we are more American in that way and we do agonize that much more over life. Also, all my input is American. I only read American novels, I only watch American television.

What American writers do you admire?

My inspiration was Anne Tyler. I'm very different from her, but I think she's fantastic. It's that simplicity, where there seems to be bottomless intelligence and yet they don't exclude. I think for me, what's wrong with more or less all English fiction, to be clever means to be erudite and to express your vocabulary and it alienates more or less everybody. They have tiny book sales and there's this little literary circle in Britain which is basically for themselves and doesn't impinge upon the outside world at all. What the fuck's that? The good American writers don't exclude in that way.

Who else do you read?

There's a short story writer called Lorrie Moore who I think is great, Tobias Wolff ... "This Boy's Life" was a big book for me before I wrote "Fever Pitch." Part of it also comes from teaching. You're looking around for stuff to give to kids that takes them places, is intelligent and that they can also comprehend. That's why in English schools even today people read Hemingway and Steinbeck all the time, "Of Mice and Men," Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye." You don't feel you're being patronized by the vocabulary of the characters because the ideas and relationships behind it are extremely complex, yet the language itself is simple, so any kid can grasp what's going on in those books.

Are you happy with the way your books have been received?

None of the books have had really bad reviews, but I think I'm still viewed by the "establishment" with some suspicion.

Why's that?

Well, none of the books have been up for a literary prize. I don't feel chippy about it at all, but looking at it dispassionately I think that "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy" were better books than some which ended up on short lists.

Why do you think that is?

I think we have a problem with jokes in literature. If you have jokes, it's not literature. How many funny books have won the Booker Prize? I can't remember how this came up, but I think it was the year "High Fidelity" came out and one of the judges was asked why "High Fidelity" and a couple of other books weren't on the list, and she said, "I think people are confusing the best book with the best read." I appreciate you can have a difference but I'll tell you, you can't have a good book that isn't a good read. If it's not a good read, it's a bad book.

Do you think fiction should be without geography?

Oh no, I think fiction should certainly have a set geography. I think something's gone wrong somewhere if a book works for every single audience everywhere in the world. I don't think I'm writing about Britain, but a very precise class of people who could exist in four or five European countries. They're metropolitan books, they're written about places where there are lots of record shops, where there are lots of people who don't know what to do with their lives and people who drift from relationship to relationship.

Have you ever been interested in relocating to the U.S. for a couple of years somewhere down the line to write a book?

There's a part of me that feels it's sort of cheating. The sort of book where you go and research something and then regurgitate it onto the page doesn't seem like proper writing to me. I'd be wondering what had come from me if I took myself somewhere and said, "Right, I'm going to live in Memphis, look at Memphis and write about Memphis people." There's people who have been living in Memphis for the past 50 years and they're not going to be interested in what I think of Memphis having lived there for three months. In terms of urban environments, let's say I went to San Francisco. I'd end up writing the same sort of book except the places would be different. Names of streets would be different and so on.

In "About a Boy" you explored a "typical male" reaction to children and the concept of fatherhood. Yet you seem very comfortable with your own role as a father.

Anyone who has a kid, at some point in every day, for one minute, says, "Fucking hell! I wish I lived in this penthouse with my CDs in perfect order and no one to piss around with my Bang & Olufson!" And writing a book is taking that flash of fantasy and expanding on it. In the course of a day you have a million contradictory thoughts. You look at a woman and think, For this second I do not want to be married. All that stuff happens all the time and can take you anywhere, and all that stuff is certainly true about being a parent.

Has fatherhood influenced your writing?

My experience with Danny is so different that I don't think that has properly influenced my writing yet. [Danny is autistic.]

Does writing force you to analyze yourself as a person?

Well with the type of books that they are, contemporary, I think it's very hard to write about things like drugs or hooligans without finding a bit of yourself in there.

Is writing books therapeutic for you?

Well, I have therapy as well, so [laughs] ... I had therapy a couple of years before I wrote "Fever Pitch," and it was the first time I'd ever talked about football in a way other than it being football. I used to go on Mondays, and every Monday I'd sit down and be asked, "How was your weekend?" And I'd reply, "Oh it was crap, 'cause we lost 2-1." It was just a crap joke because I didn't know what else to say. After about a year she [the therapist] said, "Why do you always do that, the joke about the weekend?" And she just started asking me about it. It had never occurred to me that there was any sort of meaning connected at all. And I was amazed at the time scale of when she pointed out I was getting interested in football relative to my parents getting divorced and things like that. So I don't think the book was therapy but is was certainly a product of it.

Your first book dealt with very personal subjects.

When I saw ["Fever Pitch"] in print for the first time I thought, God, I've exposed myself here! You look at it and think, Why did I want to go and write all this stuff about me? It struck me as a very peculiar thing to have done.

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With the restaurant all but empty, save for a handsome chap and two rather stunning women at the table behind us, it was time for Hornby to go home and continue working on his fourth book. The working title: "How to Be Good."

"It's at an early stage and it's narrated by a woman," Hornby said quickly before thanking me for lunch and striding purposefully out of the restaurant.

But then I saw him stop, turn abruptly and head speedily back inside, head down. He looked a bit stern and it was actually a little worrying. He came right up to me, stopped and looked up from under his eyebrows before gesturing over his shoulder at the occupied table.

"Giles Grimandi," he whispered, having recognized the Arsenal defender moments earlier. He winked and quickly strode back out.

Even Nick Hornby couldn't have written a better ending.