FINE TUNED

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

If there is a single grating habit that has afflicted young writers of the past decade, it is a tendency to define characters not necessarily by their histories or heartaches or small triumphs but, more economically, as a sum of their pop-cultural tastes. Want to show that someone is vacuous? Put him in Gucci loafers. Want to convey sophistication? Mention a character's love of Godard. Want to suggest that a person has developed unrealistic notions of familial closeness? Have her reminisce about watching The Brady Bunch.

The Pulitzer Prize for referencing goes to Bret Easton Ellis, whose famously lazy prose has made him the Danny Bonaduce of letters. In the hands of British writer Nick Hornby, though, the affectation is used to excellent effect. Hornby, 38, is worshipped in Britain for his 1992 book, Fever Pitch, a humorous memoir about his life as a soccer fan. In this first novel, High Fidelity (Riverhead Books; $21.95; 323 pages), he demonstrates his enviable talent for lucid, laconic writing.

Happily, Hornby does not rely on pop-cultural allusion to limn his characters' inner lives, but uses it instead to create a rich, wry backdrop for them. His hero is Rob Fleming, an aging, contemplative slacker who owns a London record shop and enjoys rattling off lists of his top five favorite Elvis Costello songs or episodes of Cheers. When Rob's friends suggest that he should test women with a questionnaire about their favorite artists and musicians, Rob jokes that it is "intended to prevent a chap from leaping into bed with someone who might at a later date turn out to have every Julio Iglesias record ever made."

Rob is ultimately a great deal more than the total of his brand-name likes and dislikes. High Fidelity focuses on his efforts to regain the love of an ex-girlfriend, and throughout, Rob is drawn poignantly as a man who has loved up and fallen down--enamored of women who are too beautiful and accomplished to stay with him. Hornby is as fine an analyst as he is a funny man, and his book is a true original.