Customer Reviews

Saint Morrissey: A Portrait of This Charming Man by an Alarming Fan

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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.

i've read over 10 books in the smiths/morrissey vein and this one's good. the author's also a fan. very insightful.

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.