Heaven knows he’s miserable, and so am I after reading this. Reader, I hurled. W H Auden said that “The interests of a writer and the interests of his readers are never the same and if, on occasion, they happen to coincide, this is a lucky accident.” This is the perfect epigraph for Morrissey’s sprawling and broken “autobiography”.
This is a bad book. This does not mean it is an uninteresting book, or even a badly written book. It is simply the result of a great artist let free to be his most overindulgent, insipid and childish. Penguin will come to thoroughly regret giving the imprimatur of its classic series.
The Morrissey that is revealed in Autobiography is a thoroughly unpleasant person, for whom the normal trials and tribulations of life are soul lashing experiences worthy. Of his rejection of a job at a local post office, he tells us he felt “now the only thing left for me was death.” In an attempt at morbid irony, he refers to working as a clerk for the Inland Revenue Department as a “fate worse than life.”
The ultimate moment of hubris comes when he has the chutzpah to seriously compare losing a royalties dispute with two of his former band members to the persecution by the British justice system that Oscar Wilde faced in his trial for homosexuality (the judge, in both cases being simply jealous of their great genius).
One of the most embarrassing aspects of his autobiography is his absurd Peter Pan complex; he wishes to forever play the role of the tortured alienated youth. His words are eternally adolescent and they sound juvenile and embarrassing, coming from a man in his mid 50’s (Morrissey is 54 as of Autobiography’s publication).
This is decisively not an autobiography. It is Morrissey churning words for 500 pages about whichever topics he would like to address; the reader’s interests remain a distracting sidenote. There is almost nothing for instance on the actual process of creating his immortal songs, or of the reasons for the breakup of the Smiths, or anything substantial on his social and political opinions.
Despite his famous “outspokenness” he is unusually reticent on most things that fans would wish to know about. He has a complete inability to put himself or the events in his life in perspective. Does he genuinely believe that even the most die-hard fan cares about the fact that the Smiths name was obscured by the artwork (this, predictably made him feel like he wanted to die)?
There is much introspection, but a complete inability to be self-deprecating. Morrissey was a bitter, angry young genius. Now that he is near 54, he is simply a bitter, angry old man.
Autobiography is published by Penguin Classics and is available here.
