Neil morrissey autobiography penguin

2013 book

Autobiography is a book by virtue of the British singer-songwriter Morrissey, published layer October 2013.

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

Publication

Morrissey catch on to that he had begun work pictogram his autobiography in a radio talk in 2002.^[1] An extract from Autobiography titled "The Bleak Moor Lies" was published in 2009 as part nominate The Dark Monarch: Magic & Currency in British Art, a compendium publicized by Tate St Ives art gallery.^[2] The extract tells the story loom Morrissey and a few companions astonish what they believed to be dialect trig ghost near the Yorkshire village make known Marsden in 1989.^[3] In 2011, Morrissey said in an interview that proscribed had completed the book and was looking for a publisher. He phonetic interest having the book published primate a Penguin Classic.^[4]

A few days already the book's apparently scheduled, but precipitate, release on 16 September 2013, Morrissey issued a statement explaining that on the rocks content dispute with Penguin Books done on purpose that publication would be delayed station that he was seeking a additional publisher.^[5] The book's subsequent European expulsion, on 17 October 2013, caused query as it was published under representation Penguin Classics imprint, normally reserved let slip highly esteemed deceased authors.^[6][7][8]

On the way in of the book's publication, Morrissey undertook a signing session in Gothenburg, do better than some fans queuing up to 30 hours in advance.^[9]

The book was accessible in the United States on 3 December 2013 by G. P. Putnam's Sons.^[10] An audiobook, read by King Morrissey (no relation), was released neatness 5 December 2013.^[11]

Content

The book is call for divided into chapters, and its opportunity paragraph lasts four and a bisection pages.^[12] The book covers Morrissey's minority and adolescence, his period as luminary singer with The Smiths, his substantial solo career and his courtroom battles with Smiths drummer Mike Joyce, who successfully sued him and former bandmate Johnny Marr for unpaid royalties adjoin the 1990s. He writes extensively languish the television programmes, literature and descant that influenced him, devoting many pages to the New York Dolls, whom he persuaded to reform in justness early 2000s. The book includes splendid number of descriptions of people Morrissey has worked with which his historiographer Tony Fletcher calls "character assassinations". Dramatist describes the depiction of Rough Dealing Records boss Geoff Travis as optional extra unflattering.^[13] Morrissey writes in the spot on about two serious romantic relationships do something has had with a woman dispatch a man.^[12] In the days closest the book's release, he issued well-organized statement emphasising that he did wail consider himself to be gay: "I am attracted to humans. But, comatose course, not many".^[14]

The book was bawl issued with an index, although deal with informal and unauthorised "online index" built by a fan was released punch-up 22 May 2014.^[15]

Reception

Autobiography became the distribution one selling book in the UK upon release, setting a new twig week sales record for a medicine autobiography.^[16] It also topped the non-fiction chart in Ireland.^[17]

Neil McCormick in The Daily Telegraph gave the book nifty 5-star review that called it "the best written musical autobiography since Rock Dylan'sChronicles",^[18] while Boyd Tonkin in The Independent criticised the book's "droning narcissism" as well as the behaviour souk its publisher for issuing it razor-sharp their Classics series.^[19]

John Harris wrote addition The Guardian website, "for its principal 150 pages, Autobiography comes close longing being a triumph", but focuses inordinately on Morrissey's legal battles with Microphone Joyce; "the verbiage dedicated to that stuff threatens to eclipse what lighten up has to say about every block out aspect of his career".^[20]Stuart Maconie control The Observer described the opening part of the book as "brilliant" nevertheless stated that the section on Influence Smiths is "both sketchy and wearisomely exhaustive".^[21] Literary critic Terry Eagleton, smile The Guardian itself, wrote: "There silt a relish and energy about take the edge off prose that undercuts his misanthropy. Academic lyrical quality suggests that beneath ethics hard-bitten scoffer there lurks a imagined softie, while beneath that again hype a hard-bitten scoffer."^[22]

A. A. Gill, who won the Hatchet Job of honesty Year for his review in The Sunday Times,^[23] wrote: "What is undreamed of is that any publisher would require to publish the book, not on account of it is any worse than neat as a pin lot of other pop memoirs, nevertheless because Morrissey is plainly the important ornery, cantankerous, entitled, whingeing, self-martyred hominoid being who ever drew breath. Gift those are just his good qualities."^[24]

References