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Saint Morrissey: A Portrait of This Charming Man by an Alarming Fan
 
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Saint Morrissey: A Portrait of This Charming Man by an Alarming Fan [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Mark Simpson (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)


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Book Description

March 7, 2006
There is no other contemporary artist who is so famously difficult, so seemingly enigmatic, and so passionately loved by his fans as Morrissey. From the moment he caught the public's eye in the early 1980s as the iconic front man of the Smiths, and through his subsequent solo career, the patron saint of misfits has fascinated and baffled in equal measure.

Yet, as Mark Simpson argues in this wickedly funny and deeply sacrilegious "psycho-bio" -- told through the lens of his own obsession as a lifelong fan -- Morrissey isn't quite so enigmatic as he might appear. To understand this most private (and sexually ambivalent) of stars, one need only uncover the countless clues to his personality in his startlingly candid song lyrics and his innumerable provocative interviews.

Simpson deftly explores why Morrissey bewitched a generation -- and why he remains as intriguing as ever. Both an insightful look at the singer's career and a personal story of a boy's first love for his music idol, Saint Morrissey is, like its subject, shrewd, sharp-witted, charming, and utterly original.


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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Morrissey, the former lead singer for the 1980s underground band the Smiths, returned to the public eye last summer with his first album in seven years. Going by the breathless prose of this pop hagiography, Simpson was one of many fans who never abandoned faith during the long absence. The British journalist flirts dangerously with parody in the extravagant praise for "the greatest-ever lyricist of desire" and an unchecked tendency toward hyperbolic metaphor, but reveals some sophisticated insights into his "anti-pop idol." Mixing cultural criticism with biography, Simpson explores Morrissey's troubled childhood in the northern working-class city of Manchester and the significance of his obsessions with figures like Oscar Wilde and James Dean. The text is peppered with snippets from interviews illustrating the star's cagey relationship with the music press over the decades. A homoerotic spirit pervades much of the proceedings; Simpson describes his own initial encounter with a Smiths song as an overwhelming seduction, and reads much into the singer's collaborative relationship with guitarist Johnny Marr. But he admires Morrissey's deliberate coyness, concluding that it makes him accessible to self-identified outcasts of every orientation. With the star already on the comeback trail, this enthusiastic appreciation is well timed. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Relentlessly enjoyable."

-- Kirkus Reviews



"The faithful will have the satisfaction of discovering another person who's desperate to figure out what's going on in Moz's head."

-- Spin



"A provocative and precocious read...Smiths fans will love it."

-- Time Out (UK)



"Entertaining and perceptive...written with real flair."

-- The Times (UK)



"A sweet and tender mash note by an unabashed obsessive...witty, clever, charming, disarming."

-- Geeta Dayal, The Village Voice


Product Details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Touchstone (March 7, 2006)
  • ISBN-10: 074328481X
  • ASIN: B001PO68LK
  • Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,780,827 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Brit author and journalist Mark Simpson is credited with 'fathering' the metrosexual in the UK's Independent newspaper in 1994 (and also his hairy-backed anti-thesis the retrosexual).

Simpson introduced his insufferably pretty offspring to the US in 2002, naming David Beckham as the prime exemplar and starting the current global epidemic of metrosexmania.

In 2010 the global cool-hunting/trend-spotting website Science of the Time described him as 'the world's most perceptive writer about masculinity'.

Both the New York Times and The London Times acclaimed his saucy new concept of 'Sporno' ('the place where sport and porn meet and produce a spectacular money shot') as one of their 'Ideas of the Year'.

In December 2008 GQ Russia listed him - topless and oiled up - in their top ten Things That Changed Men's Lives, above Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sigmund Freud and even Biotherm Homme.

Publications Simpson has written for include The Times, Playboy, Out, the Independent, the Seattle Stranger, the Guardian, Vogues Hommes International and Details. He is also Senior Contributing Editor at the world's leading men's fashmag, Arena Hommes Plus.

 

Customer Reviews

3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Morrissey book that made me want to be sociable!, February 7, 2006
Simpson takes as his source material only that which Morrissey has written in his lyrics or spoken in interview, and thus claims no special privilege to know him, any more than any other fan knows him - (i.e. intimately). As such, it may or may not bear any relationship to the truth as Morrissey himself sees it, for Simpson acknowledges the self-defeating nature of trying to interpret those enigmatic lyrics. But that's irrelevant. I have never read a book before like this: every page or two, I wanted to stop and talk about what Simpson had written with someone else - I wanted to discuss, argue, complain, gasp, share the experience. Mostly, I wanted to laugh. Considering that this is a book about a man whose isolation, morbidity and alienation is legendary, this book made me want to be sociable.
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4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars 3 and 1/2 stars.., January 5, 2006
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
i've read over 10 books in the smiths/morrissey vein and this one's good. the author's also a fan. very insightful.
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4 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Still Ill, August 17, 2006
By 
Rex A. Lloyd (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I've finally finished reading Saint Morrissey after picking it up and putting it down for months and wincing in pain.
Written in some painfull form of Brittish splashy rag Daily Mirror type styling, the book offers no further insight into Morrissey's world as the Mirror might, without even bothering to make anything interesting up!
Using cookie-cut lines from Morrissey's few and formidably vague interviews throughout, Mark Simpson takes thimble sized dives into Morrissey's secret world.
What Simpson is very very good at is stylishly spewing tidbits of Morrissey's prose into Simpson's own context, which only adds to the feeling that one's reading the back of a box of something mediocre, desperately trying to sound tasty.
Simpson spends no less than three chapters lost in wonder about what Stephen Morrissey did in his bedroom for eighteen years. As much as I'd liked to have been there myself, I felt a nagging fear that Simpson was going to follow him to the loo.
Had this been a gorgeous picture book with Mark's borrowed interviews strewn about this book might have stayed in my collection.
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