Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart [Hardcover]

Gavin Hopps (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 24, 2009

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

No one has ever been as sublimely uncomfortable about being a pop star, says Hopps, describing Morrissey, the lead singer of the 1980s band, the Smiths, who went on to a successful solo career in the following decade. But Hopps wants to argue that his hero is more than just a pop star: he's a radical subversion of the traditional values of pop music who restored the genre's ability to give voice to dysfunction and alienation. The argument veers from the defensive to the impenetrably academic; the lyrics of one song, for example, are described as an unshackling of the referential function of language, while another is an urban parody of the Liebestod of Tristan and Isolde. It's not that Morrissey can't be compared, as he is here, to the likes of Oscar Wilde, Ronald Firbank and Christina Rossetti—or, perhaps most extensively, Samuel Beckett. As a singer and a songwriter, he is by just about any standard a significant artist. But Hopps's enthusiastic appraisal is at times so overwrought that it almost feels as if he's trying to convince himself as much as his academic colleagues of the validity of pursuing a thesis that is not nearly as provocative as it hopes to be. (June)
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Review

Mention in The Bookseller

(The Bookseller )

"[This is] the first book to focus on Morissey's lyrical output."
-Publishing News

(Publishing News )

mention in Times higher Education Supplement, 4 June 2009

"Hopps manages to tell Moz's life story in a way that educates even the most hardcore fans (like me). By comparing the artist to Romantic poets and incorporating references to film and other art forms, Hopps examines the former Smiths frontman with a critical eye and treats him as one of the most talented singer/songwriters of the last century. (And he is, isn't he?) Dive in, grab a highlighter and savor the plentiful footnotes."
-Whitney Matheson, USA Today's PopCandy


"Hopps gives [Morrissey] plenty of passionate, well-informed attention in The Pagaent of His Bleeding Heart, a stylish and seductive hardcover from Continuum that reflects the love and devotion of its author to the subject's worldview and musical expression. This is not a rote biography or analysis of the shebeens and spielers with collaborators, but an ideal inquiry into the aesthetic and forces which shape Morrissey's lyrics, persona, and own influence on worldwide music culture."
-KEXP, Seattle, WA

"The best book-length explication of Morrissey's peculiar genius I've come across. Acute when it does address the music, it focuses mostly on M's lyrical and vocal strategies (coyness, flirtation, caesuras and suggestive trailings away, irruptions of non-sense such as animalistic/Tourettic/comedic growls, ascent into nonverbal raptures of yodeling falsetto), then explores how these particular ways with words announce and embody a particular way of walking through the world; a life stance and ethic. Hopps managed to convince me that there's hidden depths and often-missed mischief secreted within the later work's deceptive slightness and can't-be-arsed-ness. A majorly illuminating work." -- Simon Reynolds

"Finally, Morrissey's astonishing career as a writer and singer is treated with the scholarship it deserves. This is an outstanding, elegant book, of interest not only to Morrissey's fans, but to anyone interested in the literary capacity of pop music, as well as its power to enchant, seduce and unnerve" -- Michael Bracewell, author of England Is Mine and The Nineties: When Surface Was Depth

"It's the best book-length explication of Morrissey's peculiar genius I've come across." Simon Reynolds

(Simon Reynolds )

"Hopps puts Morrissey, who he describes as pop's greatest disturbance, in the same tradition as Oscar Wilde and the Romantics, for none of whom is a simple or literal reading possible." Reggie Chamberlain-King, http://iheartau.com/reviews/morrissey-the-pageant-of-his-bleeding-heart-by-dr-gavin-hopps/

"Claiming that Morrissey is the most literary singer in the history of British popular music, and thus a serious artist working in a medium widely considered trivial, Hopps (theology, U. of St. Andrews, Scotland) compares his work to a number of canonical writers, among them Larkin, Beckett, Wilde, Hardy, and Christina Rossetti." http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/205550381.html

Mention in magic, October 2009

Mention in The Bookseller

(, )

"[This is] the first book to focus on Morissey's lyrical output."
-Publishing News

(, )

"Hopps gives [Morrissey] plenty of passionate, well-informed attention in The Pagaent of His Bleeding Heart, a stylish and seductive hardcover from Continuum that reflects the love and devotion of its author to the subject’s worldview and musical expression. This is not a rote biography or analysis of the shebeens and spielers with collaborators, but an ideal inquiry into the aesthetic and forces which shape Morrissey’s lyrics, persona, and own influence on worldwide music culture."
-KEXP, Seattle, WA

"The best book-length explication of Morrissey's peculiar genius I've come across. Acute when it does address the music, it focuses mostly on M's lyrical and vocal strategies (coyness, flirtation, caesuras and suggestive trailings away, irruptions of non-sense such as animalistic/Tourettic/comedic growls, ascent into nonverbal raptures of yodeling falsetto), then explores how these particular ways with words announce and embody a particular way of walking through the world; a life stance and ethic. Hopps managed to convince me that there's hidden depths and often-missed mischief secreted within the later work's deceptive slightness and can't-be-arsed-ness. A majorly illuminating work." – Simon Reynolds

"Finally, Morrissey's astonishing career as a writer and singer is treated with the scholarship it deserves. This is an outstanding, elegant book, of interest not only to Morrissey's fans, but to anyone interested in the literary capacity of pop music, as well as its power to enchant, seduce and unnerve" – Michael Bracewell, author of England Is Mine and The Nineties: When Surface Was Depth

"It's the best book-length explication of Morrissey's peculiar genius I've come across." Simon Reynolds

(, )

"Hopps puts Morrissey, who he describes as pop’s greatest disturbance, in the same tradition as Oscar Wilde and the Romantics, for none of whom is a simple or literal reading possible." Reggie Chamberlain-King, http://iheartau.com/reviews/morrissey-the-pageant-of-his-bleeding-heart-by-dr-gavin-hopps/

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Continuum (June 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 082641866X
• ISBN-13: 978-0826418661
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #788,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent, Much-needed Look at Morrissey's Lyrics, July 19, 2009

By 

Regina Agricola (Chatham, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart (Hardcover)

If you want a further rehash of Morrissey's collaboration with Johnny Marr and the Smiths or another speculative inquiry into his love life, then this book is NOT for you. If, however, you have been longing for a thoughtful, respectful reading of Morrissey's lyrics in terms of theme, word choice and strategy, as well as an analysis of his work in the specific context of Britain and Ireland's literary greats (Wilde, Larkin, Rossetti, Joyce, Betjeman, Beckett, Joyce), then you should buy this book immediately and prepare for an enjoyable read. "Morrissey: The Pageant of his Bleeding Heart" adroitly brings together many observations of Morrissey's work (its simultaneous emphasis on despair and levity; its tendency to dwell on the eccentric, the infirm, the monstrous; the attempts at finding a way to live and love in a world beset by categorization, failure and embarrassment, etc.) and weaves them into a coherent whole. What is most striking is how Hopps is somehow able to articulate what many Morrissey devotees have felt (ok--what I have felt!), sensed or loved about his work but have as yet been unable to express in so eloquent a fashion. Hopps' work, with its judicious use of literary criticism and passionate emphasis on always going back to the source--Morrissey's words--, makes one long for a print edition of Morrissey's complete lyrics. "The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart" is an intelligent examination of the artist--one that Morrissey very much deserves and one that we have been needing for a very long time.

9 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Squeezing My Skull, August 4, 2009

By 

Christina (Moz Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart (Hardcover)

Any true Morrissey fan knows he's brilliant, and that the majority of what he does or says is definitely well-calculated or has hidden/double meanings. However, this book has some definite over analyzation leaving it quite dry as a whole. It is written like an extremely long dissertation, which makes it a bit boring, and at times strays onto different topics. Some points made in the book seem a real reach, and I was often thinking "What would the Man say to this? Perhaps that moment was completely off the cuff, yet the author is TRYING to extricate all this hidden meaning behind it?" If you are looking for a book about Moz, definitely stick with Len Brown, as Hopps has no direct interviews he's conducted that make me relaxed and confident that his meanings and interpretations about the songs are spot on. Besides, Mozza wants us to think and feel the music on an individual basis, not via others analysis.