Morrisseys autobiography

Around fifty pages of _Autobiography _are spent on this, not much less than he writes about the entirety of the Smiths’ six-year career, and it is a section which combines several of the book’s worst faults—a need for retribution over all else, a pointless re-running of obscure long-past arguments, and a shocking indifference to the reader. For anyone who knows nothing about the case before picking up Autobiography, the information that explains what the case is actually about is only slowly and confusingly explained in piecemeal, as if Morrissey thinks that as long as the reader knows that he has been terribly, terribly wronged then any further details are more or less superfluous.

It’s not even that I disagree with the overall point he is making about the case—my legal sympathies are for the most part with him and Marr—but the endless, incoherent, enraged way he makes that point stretches every other kind of sympathy beyond repair. Eventually Morrissey starts going through specific parts of the evidence, legal letter by legal letter, offering his own tart and angry rejoinders to the judge’s comments in exasperated italics, capitals and exclamation marks, like a seething, impotent blogger. He can’t bear what happened; few readers will be able to bear to see him go on and on like this. Is this really how Morrissey wants to be remembered?

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Autobiography ends mystifyingly with a long tour travelogue, fairly detailed and fairly aimless, from a few years back. It feels as though, stuck without anything else he really wanted to say, it suddenly struck him he could try to channel the casual and vivid cult pop-literary classic, Diary Of A Rock’n’Roll Star, an account of a short American tour by his early idol, Mott the Hoople singer Ian Hunter. (“And what do YOU like in life?” a Catholic priest asks Morrissey on page “‘Mott the Hoople’,” I replied truthfully.”) But this feels like another book altogether, and not one that particularly suits him, because Morr

It is a key belief of my that it is important to, occasionally, read bad books. Otherwise, how is one to retain a sense of ones own potentiality for publication?

So, I went into Morrissey&#;s Autobiography expecting to be annoyed. Expecting to hate it. One of the key reasons why I bought it was because the level of vitriol my girlfriend feels towards the man made purchasing his book a fun, forbidden, act. In a class on Wednesday, one of coursemates saw it in my bag and sneered.

This is a book NO ONE wanted me to read. Thus, partly because I&#;m an angry liberal vegetarian, partly because I quite liked the Smiths for about six months when I was nineteen, I decided to give it a go.

There are some GLARING faults. Some pretty huge problems. And several things that are just plain offensive. For example:

a) The word &#;Israelites&#; is used disparagingly to refer to lawyers/accountants at least once, I think twice;

b) There is a definite streak of misogyny, at one point criticising the New York Dolls for chasing &#;the bearded clam&#;, then on the next page referring to ignorant people as &#;clam-heads&#;, two phrases non-normative enough to, in close proximity, imply a connection between vaginas and idiocy;

c) It is, without a doubt, pretentious. The writing is incredibly readable (which is ultimately a good thing), but individual sentences and paragraphs are long, and done so in a deliberate, showy way that makes one feel as if there is an expectation that the reader should struggle;

d) Name-dropping;

e) An utter lack of managing to characterise any of the musicians he has toured with for the last twenty plus years;

f) He constantly quotes himself;

g) There is a boring obsession with statistics &#; venue sizes, chart positions, sales, financials, etc;

h) The book as a whole is poorly edited &#; the section about a court hearing re: Smiths loyalties in the mids is surprisingly involving, quite well put together, it ends… But then there are about t

book

Autobiography is a book by the British singer-songwriter Morrissey, published in October

It was published under the Penguin Classics imprint. It was a number one best-seller in the UK and received polarised reviews, with certain reviewers hailing it as brilliant writing and others decrying it as overwrought and self-indulgent.

Publication

Morrissey mentioned that he had begun work on his autobiography in a radio interview in An extract from Autobiography titled "The Bleak Moor Lies" was published in as part of The Dark Monarch: Magic & Modernity in British Art, a compendium published by Tate St Ives art gallery. The extract tells the story of Morrissey and a few companions seeing what they believed to be a ghost near the Yorkshire village of Marsden in In , Morrissey said in an interview that he had completed the book and was looking for a publisher. He expressed interest having the book published as a Penguin Classic.

A few days before the book's apparently scheduled, but unannounced, release on 16 September , Morrissey issued a statement explaining that a content dispute with Penguin Books meant that publication would be delayed and that he was seeking a new publisher. The book's subsequent European release, on 17 October , caused controversy as it was published under the Penguin Classics imprint, normally reserved for highly esteemed deceased authors.

On the d