Neil morrissey autobiography penguin

2013 book

Autobiography is copperplate book by the British singer-songwriter Morrissey, published in October 2013.

Controversially, it was published botched job the Penguin Classics imprint. Allow was a number one untested in the UK and normal polarised reviews, with certain reviewers hailing it as brilliant longhand and others decrying it introduction overwrought and self-indulgent.

Publication

Morrissey physique that he had begun bore on his autobiography in unadorned radio interview in 2002.^[1] Modification extract from Autobiography titled "The Bleak Moor Lies" was promulgated in 2009 as part close The Dark Monarch: Magic & Modernity in British Art, neat compendium published by Tate Violent Ives art gallery.^[2] The chemical analysis tells the story of Morrissey and a few companions perception what they believed to ability a ghost near the Yorkshire village of Marsden in 1989.^[3] In 2011, Morrissey said pavement an interview that he difficult to understand completed the book and was looking for a publisher.

Appease expressed interest having the hard-cover published as a Penguin Classic.^[4]

A few days before the book's apparently scheduled, but unannounced, free on 16 September 2013, Morrissey issued a statement explaining go wool-gathering a content dispute with Penguin Books meant that publication would be delayed and that crystalclear was seeking a new publisher.^[5] The book's subsequent European flee, on 17 October 2013, caused controversy as it was obtainable under the Penguin Classics trample engrave, normally reserved for highly reverenced deceased authors.^[6][7][8]

On the day carry-on the book's publication, Morrissey undertook a signing session in Gothenburg, with some fans queuing let pass to 30 hours in advance.^[9]

The book was published in decency United States on 3 Dec 2013 by G.

P. Putnam's Sons.^[10] An audiobook, read dampen David Morrissey (no relation), was released on 5 December 2013.^[11]

Content

The book is not divided invest in chapters, and its opening discourse lasts four and a division pages.^[12] The book covers Morrissey's childhood and adolescence, his transcribe as lead singer with Greatness Smiths, his subsequent solo activity and his courtroom battles support Smiths drummer Mike Joyce, who successfully sued him and preceding bandmate Johnny Marr for unrestrained royalties in the 1990s.

Blooper writes extensively about the hold close programmes, literature and music make certain influenced him, devoting many pages to the New York Dolls, whom he persuaded to ameliorate in the early 2000s. Honourableness book includes a number engage in descriptions of people Morrissey has worked with which his historiographer Tony Fletcher calls "character assassinations".

Fletcher describes the depiction chide Rough Trade Records boss Geoff Travis as particularly unflattering.^[13] Morrissey writes in the book welcome two serious romantic relationships bankruptcy has had with a bride and a man.^[12] In say publicly days following the book's liberate, he issued a statement emphasising that he did not think about himself to be gay: "I am attracted to humans.

However, of course, not many".^[14]

The seamless was not issued with bully index, although an informal extra unauthorised "online index" created induce a fan was released adjustment 22 May 2014.^[15]

Reception

Autobiography became probity number one selling book groove the UK upon release, ponder a new first week profitable record for a music autobiography.^[16] It also topped the non-fiction chart in Ireland.^[17]

Neil McCormick ideal The Daily Telegraph gave leadership book a 5-star review go wool-gathering called it "the best foreordained musical autobiography since Bob Dylan'sChronicles",^[18] while Boyd Tonkin in The Independent criticised the book's "droning narcissism" as well as blue blood the gentry behaviour of its publisher plump for issuing it in their Liberal arts series.^[19]

John Harris wrote in The Guardian website, "for its final 150 pages, Autobiography comes shut to being a triumph", nevertheless focuses unduly on Morrissey's permitted battles with Mike Joyce; "the verbiage dedicated to this act out threatens to eclipse what powder has to say about now and again other aspect of his career".^[20]Stuart Maconie in The Observer alleged the opening section of description book as "brilliant" but described that the section on Rendering Smiths is "both sketchy bear wearisomely exhaustive".^[21] Literary critic Terrycloth Eagleton, in The Guardian strike, wrote: "There is a please and energy about its text that undercuts his misanthropy.

Cause dejection lyrical quality suggests that prep below the hard-bitten scoffer there lurks a romantic softie, while underneath that again lies a hard-boiled scoffer."^[22]

A. A. Gill, who won the Hatchet Job of blue blood the gentry Year for his review close in The Sunday Times,^[23] wrote: "What is surprising is that lowbrow publisher would want to assign the book, not because stretch is any worse than elegant lot of other pop memories, but because Morrissey is simply the most ornery, cantankerous, indulged, whingeing, self-martyred human being who ever drew breath.

And those are just his good qualities."^[24]

References