Morrissey biography review

Morrissey: Autobiography

Published by Penguin Classics

Out Now

REVIEW FROM AFTERNOON OF RELEASE (17th October 2013)

(Beware – review may contain spoilers.)

“It’s time the tale were told…”

Crucial to the understanding of Morrissey is that there is no understanding of Morrissey.

Spending three decades as the most consistently contradictory enigma – part national treasure and part national scourge – is something managed previously by no one. Even David Bowie’s near-decade public exile didn’t quite manage to achieve the unique situation Morrissey has carefully constructed since his first yelps into public consciousness between 1983 and ’84.

It’s no surprise that Morrissey’s autobiography – once dispelling doubt over everything up to and including its actual existence – would be hard currency in the publishing world.

Confounding literary precedent, ‘Autobiography’ is now