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List of the Lost
Beware the novelist . . . intimate and indiscreet . . . pompous, prophetic airs . . . here is the fact of fiction . . . an American tale where, naturally, evil conquers good, and none live happily ever after, for the complicated pangs of the empty experiences of flesh-and-blood human figures are the reason why nothing can ever be enough. To read a book is to let a root sink down. List of the Lost is the reality of what is true battling against what is permitted to be true.
128 pages, ebook
First published September 24, 2015
44 people are currently reading
970 people want to read
About the author
Morrissey
51 books468 followersSteven Patrick Morrissey (born 22 May 1959), known primarily as Morrissey, is an English lyricist and singer. He rose to prominence in the 1980s as the lyricist and vocalist of the alternative rock band the Smiths. The band was highly successful in the UK but broke up in 1987, and Morrissey began a solo career, making the top ten of the UK Singles Chart in the United Kingdom on ten occasions. Widely regarded as an important innovator in indie music, Morrissey has been described by music magazine NME as "one of the most influential artists ever," and The Independent has stated "most pop stars have to be dead before they reach the iconic status he has reached in his lifetime." Pitchfork Media has called him "one of the most singular figures in Western popular culture from the last 20 years."
Morrissey's lyrics have been described as "dramatic, bleak, funny vignettes about doomed relationships, lonely nightclubs, the burden of the past and the prison of the home." He is also noted for his unique baritone vocal style, though he's known to use falsetto for emphasis. His forthright, often contrarian opinions, especially on the subject of race, have led to a number of media controversies, and he has also attracted media attention for his advocacy of vegetarianism and animal rights. He has also been noted for his quiff haircut as well as his performance style of his early years.
Morrissey's lyrics have been described as "dramatic, bleak, funny vignettes about doomed relationships, lonely nightclubs, the burden of the past and the prison of the home." He is also noted for his unique baritone vocal style, though he's known to use falsetto for emphasis. His forthright, often contrarian opinions, especially on the subject of race, have led to a number of media controversies, and he has also attracted media attention for his advocacy of vegetarianism and animal rights. He has also been noted for his quiff haircut as well as his performance style of his early years.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 224 reviews
February 22, 2017
My husband made me read this and now we're getting divorced.
Want to read
February 2, 2016there's more to life than this book, you know
but not much more
not much more
book fairies DO exist!
***********************************
i need a book fairy - NOW.
please.
but not much more
not much more
book fairies DO exist!
***********************************
i need a book fairy - NOW.
please.
October 5, 2015
Without a doubt, and clearly, one of the oddest literary works by a pop singer ever. It is really beyond the category of good or bad. On one level, it's brilliant. The truth is if this book was or is simply OK, then that would be a crime against both artificial and real nature. While reading this, the name Ed Wood Junior comes to mind. In that, it's a work by an artist who follows no rules except their own. On one level, it's brilliant that he's working with Penguin, and knows its history quite well. The cover and design of this book are genius-like. But how does he arrange to get a book like this released to the world - and within the Penguin empire?
"List of the Lost" is like no other book. It truly goes beyond even taste. For me, it is probably the most Morrissey-like work, in that he has a platform where Morrissey discusses all his obsessions such as vintage AmericanTV shows, and politics. Since the narrative takes place in the 70s there are American politics, but it reads from the point-of-view of a foreigner. Although the narrative takes place in Boston, it is really that country called "Morrisseyland." It's not the United Kingdom, Europe, and for sure, not really America. Yet, it's interesting how Morrissey looks at American culture. In his style, he re-invents the U.S. culture to suit his own aesthetic. And this is what makes him a real genius. I know he's annoying at times, but like the boy with the thorn in his side, he's endlessly fascinating. And although this book is beyond pain or pleasure, it is truly a work of this man. The truth is I love Morrissey.
"List of the Lost" is like no other book. It truly goes beyond even taste. For me, it is probably the most Morrissey-like work, in that he has a platform where Morrissey discusses all his obsessions such as vintage AmericanTV shows, and politics. Since the narrative takes place in the 70s there are American politics, but it reads from the point-of-view of a foreigner. Although the narrative takes place in Boston, it is really that country called "Morrisseyland." It's not the United Kingdom, Europe, and for sure, not really America. Yet, it's interesting how Morrissey looks at American culture. In his style, he re-invents the U.S. culture to suit his own aesthetic. And this is what makes him a real genius. I know he's annoying at times, but like the boy with the thorn in his side, he's endlessly fascinating. And although this book is beyond pain or pleasure, it is truly a work of this man. The truth is I love Morrissey.
January 6, 2016
I lost interest in reading altogether like some woman escaping a disappointing love affair. “No more men at all!” I didn’t read anything for ages, faith in love distraught. What if their coach Mr. Rims was still italicizing another antonym of the pep talk? I fell asleep in the trashy wet dream and my helpless spittle escapes Morrissey’s pulpit froth into a boring stalker. I’m bored all over again just thinking about it. I can’t tell you how much I hated this. Morrissey really loved it, though. Penguin let him blurb the back (Penguin would probably kill someone for him if he asked them to. You don’t need an editor! You’re Morrissey!):
’Beware the novelist… Intimate and indiscreet… pompous, prophetic airs… here is the fact of fiction… an american tale where, naturally, evil conquers good, and none live happily ever after, for the complicated pangs of the empty experiences of flesh-and-blood human figures are the reasons why nothing can ever be enough. To read a book is to let a root sink down. List of the Lost is the reality of what is true battling against what is permitted to be true’.
James Baldwin is named dropped twice by the cypherous girlfriend, Eliza, as a presidential option if there was visible air like when it’s cold out for people who get drunk off hearing themselves talk. This should be a thing like how chlorine changes colors if they piss in the pool. Don’t go in there, they are going to talk your ear off like it lets them off the hook for life’s shittiness if they talk and talk about it. There’s a thin line between the character soap box and Morrissey’s scum, though. In a way that they aren’t real people at all but don’t feel real like a living person actually wrote about them. There are A LOT of interludes familiar to anyone who knows about Morrissey. ‘Magistrates who spend their lives hiding their mistakes and envy makes them cry’ over young lovers who have what their dying soul tombstones can’t muster. I doubt Scrooge Mcduck cringed over lovers holding hands while he’s swimming in his money pool, personally. Packaged meat containers show up to be beaten like so many dead horses. I wonder if Morrissey thinks his favorite sports teams are all vegans. He has to pretend that they are so he can still like them. I don’t agree if he sees himself as a James Baldwin (though Baldwin shares this idea of women as appendages). He’s Jean Genet without the organ transplants. Genet could be tedious as hell too. He wrote those prison fantasies as a means to live, though, and that breathed a haunting into the scabby worship for me. If you can’t love yourself then crawl on your knees and pray to the dead for your sins. But not once did I get any sense about why Ezra, Nails, Justy and Harri (OUR athletes, he says repeatedly) meant anything to Morrissey. If he wants to shield with another eye I don’t really care. Someone, please, feel something for their rippling muscles in gym shorts passing batons as a hairy pair of thighs shouts at them about points and scores. All I ask is that someone love them. Telling me they are love itself is nothing. When Ezra points his lofty finger of death to the hobo I just want to know what separated him from the Bukowski in a body bag. If Eliza had lived long enough to squeeze a baton-passer from her vagina she might have been bestowed the saintly airs only the mothers in ‘List’ have. It made me sick, really. The sex scenes are as bad as they say but I can’t get over that more than anything. I feel like precious wittle Ezra only had a girlfriend in case any macho men were around who would look down on another manly man without a piece. Well, and another mouth for Morrissey to throw his politics into because why not. That’s probably easier than writing a real story. I don’t feel like earning my experiences so I’ll just have the girlfriend go on about how the news tell you everything is hopeless and shit (and James Baldwin as president would change everything because that’s apparently how America works. One person could fix or break it all. Baldwin would have let them burn, Eliza honey. It only matters what you represent in "list of the lost" so it probably helps if everything means to you what it means to Morrissey) and then they’ll bang in a sex scene reminiscent of the “bags of sand” scene from 40 Year Old Virgin. A spectre of a perfect mother visits to beseech our athlete to do something about the death of her son from the dean Isaac. I almost forgot that was the story after so many coach Rims speeches (I’ll never forgive Morrissey for those). His dick no longer functions but justice for all. Wouldn’t it be better to have the not-a-mother Eliza tell Ezra the boy Noah could have tempted the adult penis with his boyish wiles and tears before she makes the world one less useless girl? (Eliza is the worst. First she's begging for a ring, cause girls y'know. Then she talks like someone who wouldn't say that the young boy had it coming and then the story wants her to say that so she says it.) Gosh, only the athletes throwing their arms around each other and passing the jock straps around know about real love!
The cover photo means something to Morrissey it doesn't mean to me. It appears again and again, like it is supposed to be an answer in the text. I don't know. It isn't like only athletes get these looks of concentration, sweat and goals.
Ezra, Nails and Justy felt a love for each other that prospered without the sexual, or found prosperity precisely because the sexual did not make propositions. But as their spirit forever struggles with the flesh, who is to say that their closeness was not in fact a liberating scream of the intensely sensual? Does anybody know? Can anybody control the inestimable effects of touch? Their outcome was fortunate and felt certain to last. Erotic at times, yes, but safely unsaid. Are we always waiting for life to stop? If you give someone the yes or no option, isn’t it true that they will always choose the no?
October 4, 2015
Spoilers within.
Let's do a little test. I'm going to present a series of passages. Some are from the works of Amanda McKittrick Ros, widely regarded as the worst prose stylist in the history of British letters. The rest are from List of the Lost.
--------
"How the look of jealousy, combined with sarcasm, substituted those of love and bashfulness! How the titter of tainted mockery rang throughout the entire apartment, and could hardly fail to catch the ear of her whose queenly appearance occasioned it!"
"Look at them now in their manful splendour and wonder how it is that they could possibly part this earth in dirt, as creased corpses, falling back as the skeletons that we already are, yet hidden behind musculature that will fall in time at life's finishing line."
"Arouse the seeming deadly creature to that standard of joy and gladness which should mark his noble path! Endow him with the dewdrops of affection; cast from him the pangs of the dull past, and stamp them for ever beneath the waves of troubled waters."
"Have you ever visited that portion of Erin's plot that offers its sympathetic soil for the minute survey and scrutinous examination of those in political power, whose decision has wisely been the means before now of converting the stern and prejudiced, and reaching the hand of slight aid to share its strength in augmenting its agricultural richness?"
"Did you ever compliment a friend, a mere friend, on the directed desire of their eyes? Of course you didn't. Or on their hands - whose touch certainly does something as the waft of their passing being triggers unsuspecting impulses within unsuspecting you?"
"“All quiet, all still in this decent and pleasant atmosphere of slumber and repose, where lush houses of beddy-bye shut-eye snoozled in sleepland; a smiling sleep of dreamland.”
--------
Ugh. That's quite enough of that. It would take greater analytical powers than mine to successfully separate the Morrissey quotes from the McKittrick Ros quotes without guessing at least once. List of the Lost is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst book I've ever read. It's brilliantly bad. Beautifully bad. Bizarrely, brazenly, and ball-achingly bad. It may well be possibly the worst book ever released by a major publishing house. It is every bit as awful as you may have heard.
That said, it's stupendously entertaining. It's the literary equivalent of Troll2, or Birdemic, or Plan 9 From Outer Space. Every single page, without exception, contains at least one unintentionally funny line. McKittrick Ros's contemporaries were said to play party games wherein they took turns reading from her novels, the winner being the one who could go the longest without laughing. I have no trouble imagining people playing similar games with List of the Lost in the very near future.
So why is it so bad? The first problem with List of the Lost (LOTL) is simply that it has a terribly boring storyline. The first few pages are nothing more than ceaseless reiterations of the fact that the four main characters are good friends on a college relay team. You'll be amazed at how many different ways Morrissey finds to say that. Anyway, these four guys encounter a deranged hobo and, after listening to him ranting about nothing for what seems like forever, they accidentally kill him. Unfortunately for them, he turns out to be the Devil, or something similar. By killing him, they invite a curse upon themselves. For the rest of the book, they basically meander around having implausible sex and contrived conversations until they all get killed. There's a bit more to it, but that's pretty much the gist. No amount of comically purple prose can disguise the fact that a story this flimsy simply cannot support a 118 page novel.
That brings me to the second reason why this book is so bad. Morrissey, on some level, seems to know that he's got barely enough plot for a 20 page short story, so he pads it out. And out. And out, and out, and out. He pads it with his thoughts on vegetarianism, his opinions on Winston Churchill (a figure about whom he seems to know next to nothing), Thatcherism (remember, this is a novel set in 1970s Boston), and relentless misogyny ("The lust of the woman is at first childlike and desperate). Absolutely none of this is relevant to the story. It's just sort of...there.
Then there are the already infamous sex scenes. They are, in my opinion, simultaneously the best and worst sex scenes ever written. Admittedly, this is an opinion most readers probably don't share, being content to simply dismiss them as the overwrought and slightly nauseating messes that they are. However, for sheer comedy, you just can't beat passages such as:
"At this, Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation...with Eliza's breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra's howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it whacked and smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza's body except for the otherwise central zone."
First of all, 'Bulbous salutation' and 'Otherwise central zone' are exactly what you think they are. And secondly...what the hell? I don't know what kind of sex Morrissey's been having all these years but it sounds deeply uncomfortable, especially for poor old Eliza.
I know I'm going on a bit, but to fully catalogue all the faults contained in this slim little book would require an essay almost as long as the book itself. I enjoyed it enormously. However, since I enjoyed it for all the wrong reasons, I can only give it one star. If you're one of those people who likes truly bad movies, you might well enjoy this book. If you're not, steer well clear!
P.S.
1) McKittrick Ros.
2) Morrissey.
3) McKittrick Ros.
4) McKittrick Ros.
5) Morrissey.
6) Morrissey.
How did you do? Be honest :-)
Let's do a little test. I'm going to present a series of passages. Some are from the works of Amanda McKittrick Ros, widely regarded as the worst prose stylist in the history of British letters. The rest are from List of the Lost.
--------
"How the look of jealousy, combined with sarcasm, substituted those of love and bashfulness! How the titter of tainted mockery rang throughout the entire apartment, and could hardly fail to catch the ear of her whose queenly appearance occasioned it!"
"Look at them now in their manful splendour and wonder how it is that they could possibly part this earth in dirt, as creased corpses, falling back as the skeletons that we already are, yet hidden behind musculature that will fall in time at life's finishing line."
"Arouse the seeming deadly creature to that standard of joy and gladness which should mark his noble path! Endow him with the dewdrops of affection; cast from him the pangs of the dull past, and stamp them for ever beneath the waves of troubled waters."
"Have you ever visited that portion of Erin's plot that offers its sympathetic soil for the minute survey and scrutinous examination of those in political power, whose decision has wisely been the means before now of converting the stern and prejudiced, and reaching the hand of slight aid to share its strength in augmenting its agricultural richness?"
"Did you ever compliment a friend, a mere friend, on the directed desire of their eyes? Of course you didn't. Or on their hands - whose touch certainly does something as the waft of their passing being triggers unsuspecting impulses within unsuspecting you?"
"“All quiet, all still in this decent and pleasant atmosphere of slumber and repose, where lush houses of beddy-bye shut-eye snoozled in sleepland; a smiling sleep of dreamland.”
--------
Ugh. That's quite enough of that. It would take greater analytical powers than mine to successfully separate the Morrissey quotes from the McKittrick Ros quotes without guessing at least once. List of the Lost is, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst book I've ever read. It's brilliantly bad. Beautifully bad. Bizarrely, brazenly, and ball-achingly bad. It may well be possibly the worst book ever released by a major publishing house. It is every bit as awful as you may have heard.
That said, it's stupendously entertaining. It's the literary equivalent of Troll2, or Birdemic, or Plan 9 From Outer Space. Every single page, without exception, contains at least one unintentionally funny line. McKittrick Ros's contemporaries were said to play party games wherein they took turns reading from her novels, the winner being the one who could go the longest without laughing. I have no trouble imagining people playing similar games with List of the Lost in the very near future.
So why is it so bad? The first problem with List of the Lost (LOTL) is simply that it has a terribly boring storyline. The first few pages are nothing more than ceaseless reiterations of the fact that the four main characters are good friends on a college relay team. You'll be amazed at how many different ways Morrissey finds to say that. Anyway, these four guys encounter a deranged hobo and, after listening to him ranting about nothing for what seems like forever, they accidentally kill him. Unfortunately for them, he turns out to be the Devil, or something similar. By killing him, they invite a curse upon themselves. For the rest of the book, they basically meander around having implausible sex and contrived conversations until they all get killed. There's a bit more to it, but that's pretty much the gist. No amount of comically purple prose can disguise the fact that a story this flimsy simply cannot support a 118 page novel.
That brings me to the second reason why this book is so bad. Morrissey, on some level, seems to know that he's got barely enough plot for a 20 page short story, so he pads it out. And out. And out, and out, and out. He pads it with his thoughts on vegetarianism, his opinions on Winston Churchill (a figure about whom he seems to know next to nothing), Thatcherism (remember, this is a novel set in 1970s Boston), and relentless misogyny ("The lust of the woman is at first childlike and desperate). Absolutely none of this is relevant to the story. It's just sort of...there.
Then there are the already infamous sex scenes. They are, in my opinion, simultaneously the best and worst sex scenes ever written. Admittedly, this is an opinion most readers probably don't share, being content to simply dismiss them as the overwrought and slightly nauseating messes that they are. However, for sheer comedy, you just can't beat passages such as:
"At this, Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation...with Eliza's breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra's howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it whacked and smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza's body except for the otherwise central zone."
First of all, 'Bulbous salutation' and 'Otherwise central zone' are exactly what you think they are. And secondly...what the hell? I don't know what kind of sex Morrissey's been having all these years but it sounds deeply uncomfortable, especially for poor old Eliza.
I know I'm going on a bit, but to fully catalogue all the faults contained in this slim little book would require an essay almost as long as the book itself. I enjoyed it enormously. However, since I enjoyed it for all the wrong reasons, I can only give it one star. If you're one of those people who likes truly bad movies, you might well enjoy this book. If you're not, steer well clear!
P.S.
1) McKittrick Ros.
2) Morrissey.
3) McKittrick Ros.
4) McKittrick Ros.
5) Morrissey.
6) Morrissey.
How did you do? Be honest :-)
October 2, 2015
I loved this novel. It was so strange and idiosyncratic, so different from anything else I’ve ever read. Morrissey writes like Daisy Ashford all grown up. Ostensibly set in Boston in the 1970s, the story actually took place in a surreal landscape that was not meant to have the verisimilitude of any particular time and place. I enjoyed the lyricism of the writing, and in particular I don’t think I have ever read any finer descriptions of death or awkward sex.
Usually in a book, you get a lot of warning when a character is going to die, but I was taken by surprise again and again and again here. And that’s what it’s actually like in real life. The random cruelty of death is put across very effectively in this story, and this is the realism created by the seeming unreality of the plot.
List of the Lost reminded me a lot of Gertrude Stein’s book of poetry Tender Buttons, which is also extremely unusual and non-conformist. Both of those books are so far from the mainstream that I struggle to explain/defend why I like them so much, because they’re indescribably lacking in point of reference. I think the key is that with these two books, I had to engage and grapple with them and so the experience is about me plus the book, rather than the usual experience where a book conforms to my expectations and plays a movie in my mind so I don’t really have to do any work.
I’m a writer, and in the publishing industry as a whole there’s incredible pressure to conform, conform, conform and please the gatekeepers and grab the reader by the throat in the opening paragraph. I really appreciate how Morrissey totally short circuited all that. It’s incredibly refreshing to see someone follow their own star and write whatever the hell they want and then get published by Penguin.
I was delighted or deeply moved from the first page to the last. One of the most affecting and true-to-life parts was the death of one of the character’s mothers. And something that just tickled me tremendously was an extended description of the TV show Bonanza. List of the Lost also surprisingly turned out to be something of a page turner. I started off reading it very slowly, wanting to savor it all and make sure I comprehended it, but by the end I was just racing through, wondering what would happen next.
As a big Morrissey fan, I enjoyed reading his time-honored themes (such as the perfidy of: the royal family, the police, the meat/murder industry, Margaret Thatcher, and child murderers) but this time through the medium of fiction. It was so his voice that I felt as though I was hearing him read aloud.
One of the most striking things was Morrissey’s iconoclastic disregard for what anyone thinks. It’s not just the evil people in power he’s unafraid to offend, it’s everyone. Does it seem backward and unhelpful to have the villain who’s a child molester and murderer also be a gay man who frequents drag clubs? Sure. Does Morrissey shrink from having one of his characters opine that some child victims are asking for it? No, he goes right ahead and includes this abhorrent idea. Although I’m usually so easily offended, none of this bothered me because I was just so taken with the irrepressible spirit of the story. (But trigger warning for these things!)
I can’t help but notice that a lot of people really don’t seem to like this book. I’m kind of baffled. Yes, it’s weird but it’s good. I do feel a special kinship with Morrissey’s unique sensibility, but so do a LOT of other people, and Morrissey fans are ten a penny. So...? I was wondering when I was reading it if part of the reason I loved it was just that I love Morrissey. But context can’t be escaped from, it’s always there, and if I like him wearing one hat why wouldn’t I like him wearing another hat, especially when he brings the same originality, passion, and elegiac quality to fiction as to songwriting. But I don’t think you need to bring some special knowledge to this novel in order to like it or “understand” it. In the opening, List of the Lost seemed plotless and it brought Balanchine’s plotless ballets to my mind. And I started thinking about what Balanchine said about watching ballet; you don’t have to know anything, you just open your eyes and look at it and think, Is this beautiful? Does this mean something to me? Do I like this? That was kind of what I was asking myself as I read this unusual book and the answer was always yes, yes, yes. But I am going to lend List of the Lost to my friend Rebecca who is one of the smartest people I know (and yet she does not listen to Morrissey and she teaches college English) to see what she makes of it. Obviously, as with any book, it’s a matter of taste, but where are the other folks who think this tastes delicious? Part of me wants to be this book’s champion because it isn’t being appreciated, but the rest of me realizes that this book can stand on its own two feet and does not need me of all people to be its champion. (Also, if Morrissey were unable to withstand bad reviews and mockery, then he could not be still alive today.)
Morrissey’s novel also made me think a lot about my own so-called writing. As it happens, my most recently published book was also a gothic romance. My number one concern was the portrayal and representation of marginalized people, but beyond that literally my only aims were to make the book as accessible and entertaining as I could. And now I feel like, why? Okay, I write YA instead of literary fiction, but what is so great about trying to please people? (Which by the way does not work.) Isn’t there more to writing than trying to churn out a potboiler that adheres to certain conventions of how a story is supposed to be told? What do I really have to say? If I cast aside everything I think I know about my narrative identity, who or what am I as a writer? Or am I even a writer? I believe I have a lot to learn from the unabashed individuality of List of the Lost.
Now I am going to get specific about some things that happen in the story, so if you don’t want to know what happens, it’s time for you to stop reading. Spoiler alert, okay?...
Actually, I’m going to leave it at that. List of the Lost turned out to be far from plotless; there were a lot of exciting things that happened and there was a very clear trajectory to the action. But the plot was not the main thing. And I can’t deliver the “main thing” to you in a book review. You’re going to have to find out for yourself.
[Note: I actually don't post reviews to Goodreads anymore except under exceptional circumstances. You can find my book reviews at http://brokenbiscuits.booklikes.com/blog]
Usually in a book, you get a lot of warning when a character is going to die, but I was taken by surprise again and again and again here. And that’s what it’s actually like in real life. The random cruelty of death is put across very effectively in this story, and this is the realism created by the seeming unreality of the plot.
List of the Lost reminded me a lot of Gertrude Stein’s book of poetry Tender Buttons, which is also extremely unusual and non-conformist. Both of those books are so far from the mainstream that I struggle to explain/defend why I like them so much, because they’re indescribably lacking in point of reference. I think the key is that with these two books, I had to engage and grapple with them and so the experience is about me plus the book, rather than the usual experience where a book conforms to my expectations and plays a movie in my mind so I don’t really have to do any work.
I’m a writer, and in the publishing industry as a whole there’s incredible pressure to conform, conform, conform and please the gatekeepers and grab the reader by the throat in the opening paragraph. I really appreciate how Morrissey totally short circuited all that. It’s incredibly refreshing to see someone follow their own star and write whatever the hell they want and then get published by Penguin.
I was delighted or deeply moved from the first page to the last. One of the most affecting and true-to-life parts was the death of one of the character’s mothers. And something that just tickled me tremendously was an extended description of the TV show Bonanza. List of the Lost also surprisingly turned out to be something of a page turner. I started off reading it very slowly, wanting to savor it all and make sure I comprehended it, but by the end I was just racing through, wondering what would happen next.
As a big Morrissey fan, I enjoyed reading his time-honored themes (such as the perfidy of: the royal family, the police, the meat/murder industry, Margaret Thatcher, and child murderers) but this time through the medium of fiction. It was so his voice that I felt as though I was hearing him read aloud.
One of the most striking things was Morrissey’s iconoclastic disregard for what anyone thinks. It’s not just the evil people in power he’s unafraid to offend, it’s everyone. Does it seem backward and unhelpful to have the villain who’s a child molester and murderer also be a gay man who frequents drag clubs? Sure. Does Morrissey shrink from having one of his characters opine that some child victims are asking for it? No, he goes right ahead and includes this abhorrent idea. Although I’m usually so easily offended, none of this bothered me because I was just so taken with the irrepressible spirit of the story. (But trigger warning for these things!)
I can’t help but notice that a lot of people really don’t seem to like this book. I’m kind of baffled. Yes, it’s weird but it’s good. I do feel a special kinship with Morrissey’s unique sensibility, but so do a LOT of other people, and Morrissey fans are ten a penny. So...? I was wondering when I was reading it if part of the reason I loved it was just that I love Morrissey. But context can’t be escaped from, it’s always there, and if I like him wearing one hat why wouldn’t I like him wearing another hat, especially when he brings the same originality, passion, and elegiac quality to fiction as to songwriting. But I don’t think you need to bring some special knowledge to this novel in order to like it or “understand” it. In the opening, List of the Lost seemed plotless and it brought Balanchine’s plotless ballets to my mind. And I started thinking about what Balanchine said about watching ballet; you don’t have to know anything, you just open your eyes and look at it and think, Is this beautiful? Does this mean something to me? Do I like this? That was kind of what I was asking myself as I read this unusual book and the answer was always yes, yes, yes. But I am going to lend List of the Lost to my friend Rebecca who is one of the smartest people I know (and yet she does not listen to Morrissey and she teaches college English) to see what she makes of it. Obviously, as with any book, it’s a matter of taste, but where are the other folks who think this tastes delicious? Part of me wants to be this book’s champion because it isn’t being appreciated, but the rest of me realizes that this book can stand on its own two feet and does not need me of all people to be its champion. (Also, if Morrissey were unable to withstand bad reviews and mockery, then he could not be still alive today.)
Morrissey’s novel also made me think a lot about my own so-called writing. As it happens, my most recently published book was also a gothic romance. My number one concern was the portrayal and representation of marginalized people, but beyond that literally my only aims were to make the book as accessible and entertaining as I could. And now I feel like, why? Okay, I write YA instead of literary fiction, but what is so great about trying to please people? (Which by the way does not work.) Isn’t there more to writing than trying to churn out a potboiler that adheres to certain conventions of how a story is supposed to be told? What do I really have to say? If I cast aside everything I think I know about my narrative identity, who or what am I as a writer? Or am I even a writer? I believe I have a lot to learn from the unabashed individuality of List of the Lost.
Now I am going to get specific about some things that happen in the story, so if you don’t want to know what happens, it’s time for you to stop reading. Spoiler alert, okay?...
Actually, I’m going to leave it at that. List of the Lost turned out to be far from plotless; there were a lot of exciting things that happened and there was a very clear trajectory to the action. But the plot was not the main thing. And I can’t deliver the “main thing” to you in a book review. You’re going to have to find out for yourself.
[Note: I actually don't post reviews to Goodreads anymore except under exceptional circumstances. You can find my book reviews at http://brokenbiscuits.booklikes.com/blog]
September 30, 2015
I was umm'ing and aw'ing until about page 100 - Do I give it two stars or three? Two seems too little, three too much. But the end solidified for me feelings I'd had throughout - mainly that Morrissey has a lot to learn about writing a novel.
I finished it though, and there's something to be said for that. Despite the abundance of internal rhymes within sentences and using alliteration seemingly every-chance-he-got, something compelled me to keep reading. And I had no particular wish that Morrissey shouldn't be good at writing fiction. But mistakes of the inexperienced writer learning their craft (what a strange thing to say of a lyricist whose songs I've been drawn to for decades) kept creeping in again and again. The voice of the narrator being the most glaring. I would've been fine reading something where Morrissey set out 'this is what I think about this (Thatcher, Reagan, the justice system) and this is what I think about these things (sexuality, animal welfare, religion)....' and so on, without him needing to create characters to voice these ideas. And although the story nominally takes place in 1975, the narrator is telling it from the point-of-view of today. There is absolutely no need - it did nothing for the (all-important) story - for him to start analyzing 'Bonanza' then jumping to Ronald Reagan and then Laura Bush. What do they - lurking in the (in her case, distant) future - have to do with a track team facing mortalities in 1975? A friend of mine commented 'at least it's only 118 pages', but if you took out all the irrelevant digressions, it'd probably be about 60. There were also anachronisms that were too close to call, but I highly doubt the homeless man in the woods would have used an analogy about a microwave oven.
It was the end that really knocked it down to that one star for me. People, at least no one I've ever met (or read, for that matter) don't talk like that. Our author was cramming opinions into their mouths whilst attempting an elegance that does not jibe with the spoken word.
I finished it though, and there's something to be said for that. Despite the abundance of internal rhymes within sentences and using alliteration seemingly every-chance-he-got, something compelled me to keep reading. And I had no particular wish that Morrissey shouldn't be good at writing fiction. But mistakes of the inexperienced writer learning their craft (what a strange thing to say of a lyricist whose songs I've been drawn to for decades) kept creeping in again and again. The voice of the narrator being the most glaring. I would've been fine reading something where Morrissey set out 'this is what I think about this (Thatcher, Reagan, the justice system) and this is what I think about these things (sexuality, animal welfare, religion)....' and so on, without him needing to create characters to voice these ideas. And although the story nominally takes place in 1975, the narrator is telling it from the point-of-view of today. There is absolutely no need - it did nothing for the (all-important) story - for him to start analyzing 'Bonanza' then jumping to Ronald Reagan and then Laura Bush. What do they - lurking in the (in her case, distant) future - have to do with a track team facing mortalities in 1975? A friend of mine commented 'at least it's only 118 pages', but if you took out all the irrelevant digressions, it'd probably be about 60. There were also anachronisms that were too close to call, but I highly doubt the homeless man in the woods would have used an analogy about a microwave oven.
It was the end that really knocked it down to that one star for me. People, at least no one I've ever met (or read, for that matter) don't talk like that. Our author was cramming opinions into their mouths whilst attempting an elegance that does not jibe with the spoken word.
September 27, 2015
I don't think I have a sufficient vocabulary to express how bad this book is, I think it's something you can only truly comprehend if you read it.
Mercifully, it's short - a mere 118 pages. Yet every one of those pages is filled with overwritten pseudy bollocks. Morrissey spouting a load of pointless wank, random rhyming couplets, unnecessary alliteration, and a plot that makes virtually no sense (rather like any of the monologues/dialogues in the book).
Mercifully, it's short - a mere 118 pages. Yet every one of those pages is filled with overwritten pseudy bollocks. Morrissey spouting a load of pointless wank, random rhyming couplets, unnecessary alliteration, and a plot that makes virtually no sense (rather like any of the monologues/dialogues in the book).
October 9, 2015
Don't let the wave of negativity that greeted this book fool you: "List of the Lost" may not be a success, but it's an interesting failure, one that can't be dismissed by the junior high tactic of quoting some sex scenes out of context.
Morrissey, whose earlier memoir was met with a roughly opposite reaction from critics, has written a small, strange tale about an ill-starred college track team in Boston in 1975, and what makes the novel interesting is also what stops it from being truly good: Morrissey's determination to pursue his obsessions to the end of his life.
Everything that's made him world-famous is here: "Carry On"-style slapstick, laugh-out-loud witticisms and barbed remarks, swooning evocations of doomed romance, and a spiky resentment for all of life's authority figures, except our mothers.
Because few of the critics seem aware of the forces that have shaped him, they miss the way his influences, from Oscar Wilde to the "angry young man" school of British writers from the late 1950s and early 1960s, shape this book. But those influences are important for understanding the novel as a Derek Jarman-esque fantasy of American youth and vigor in the bygone mid-1970s, and the dark nemesis waiting for it, rather than as a social realist account of student-athletes, which is apparently what many people would prefer.
Moreover, virtually every character in the novel - except for the selfless mothers and one hapless track team replacement who I'd almost swear is an off-puttingly cruel caricature of Craig Gannon - is Morrissey himself. He gives the best lines to the exasperated track coach, Rims, but every other character - the faithful, fiesty girlfriend; the supernaturally repellent hobo who sets the story's endgame in motion; even the satanically villainous college dean; all are in some ways recognizably versions of the author himself. And this cast of Morrisseys, like their creator, are at times funny, infuriating, incomprehensible, slightly scary, and ultimately sadly affecting in their recognition that love is the only measure of a life's worth and the simultaneous conviction that it is unattainable.
Among other things, this is a middle aged man's reckoning with mortality in some of its least appealing aspects: the decay of the body (Morrissey-as-sensualist has never been more evident than in the book's earnest celebrations of what it's like to be young and in possession of a race-worthy body); the regrets piled up by the past; the shortness of time left; the scope of what time has taken away. Morrissey has always been fixated on death, but the mooning gloom of "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" is a world away from the sober, bitter reflections of "List of the Lost." Everyone in the book is in mourning for their own wasted lives or the wasted lives of others, a condition Morrissey suggests is the only rational response to modern life.
Unfortunately, the very obsessions that animate the work also prevent it from being a successful novel. Morrissey simply can't get out of his own way as a narrator, and every time the story starts clicking along he steps in to derail it with a harangue about animal rights, overweight people, marriage, Christianity, the criminal justice system, the television show "Bonanza," hereditary monarchy, etc. The zenith, or nadir, probably comes when the characters Ezra and Eliza - two American college students in 1975 - spend several pages denouncing Margaret Thatcher.
The book is too slight to overcome this tendency towards diatribe, along with a prose style that produces as many clunkers as it does felicitous phrases, and often seems like the kind of thing someone would write if he were used to reciting his writing out loud, which of course Morrissey is.
It's not a good book, but it isn't a terrible one either, and if anything Morrissey has done in 30 years has moved you, you'll find something here worth taking.
Morrissey, whose earlier memoir was met with a roughly opposite reaction from critics, has written a small, strange tale about an ill-starred college track team in Boston in 1975, and what makes the novel interesting is also what stops it from being truly good: Morrissey's determination to pursue his obsessions to the end of his life.
Everything that's made him world-famous is here: "Carry On"-style slapstick, laugh-out-loud witticisms and barbed remarks, swooning evocations of doomed romance, and a spiky resentment for all of life's authority figures, except our mothers.
Because few of the critics seem aware of the forces that have shaped him, they miss the way his influences, from Oscar Wilde to the "angry young man" school of British writers from the late 1950s and early 1960s, shape this book. But those influences are important for understanding the novel as a Derek Jarman-esque fantasy of American youth and vigor in the bygone mid-1970s, and the dark nemesis waiting for it, rather than as a social realist account of student-athletes, which is apparently what many people would prefer.
Moreover, virtually every character in the novel - except for the selfless mothers and one hapless track team replacement who I'd almost swear is an off-puttingly cruel caricature of Craig Gannon - is Morrissey himself. He gives the best lines to the exasperated track coach, Rims, but every other character - the faithful, fiesty girlfriend; the supernaturally repellent hobo who sets the story's endgame in motion; even the satanically villainous college dean; all are in some ways recognizably versions of the author himself. And this cast of Morrisseys, like their creator, are at times funny, infuriating, incomprehensible, slightly scary, and ultimately sadly affecting in their recognition that love is the only measure of a life's worth and the simultaneous conviction that it is unattainable.
Among other things, this is a middle aged man's reckoning with mortality in some of its least appealing aspects: the decay of the body (Morrissey-as-sensualist has never been more evident than in the book's earnest celebrations of what it's like to be young and in possession of a race-worthy body); the regrets piled up by the past; the shortness of time left; the scope of what time has taken away. Morrissey has always been fixated on death, but the mooning gloom of "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" is a world away from the sober, bitter reflections of "List of the Lost." Everyone in the book is in mourning for their own wasted lives or the wasted lives of others, a condition Morrissey suggests is the only rational response to modern life.
Unfortunately, the very obsessions that animate the work also prevent it from being a successful novel. Morrissey simply can't get out of his own way as a narrator, and every time the story starts clicking along he steps in to derail it with a harangue about animal rights, overweight people, marriage, Christianity, the criminal justice system, the television show "Bonanza," hereditary monarchy, etc. The zenith, or nadir, probably comes when the characters Ezra and Eliza - two American college students in 1975 - spend several pages denouncing Margaret Thatcher.
The book is too slight to overcome this tendency towards diatribe, along with a prose style that produces as many clunkers as it does felicitous phrases, and often seems like the kind of thing someone would write if he were used to reciting his writing out loud, which of course Morrissey is.
It's not a good book, but it isn't a terrible one either, and if anything Morrissey has done in 30 years has moved you, you'll find something here worth taking.
September 24, 2015
Shame he dies in the end.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 23, 2015
One star for the entertaining digression on celibacy in "Bonanza". Maybe next time Morrissey could write "Bonanza" slash instead?
October 7, 2015
Beware the Morrissey . . . rambling and overwritten . . . pompous, overblown airs . . . here is the fact of fiction . . . an American tale where, to a far-fetched extreme, evil conquers good, and none live happily ever after, least of all the reader. The ridiculous, far-fetched empty experiences of improbable human figures are the reason why some people should stick to what they are good at. To read a book is to let a root sink down. List of the Lost is so far removed from the reality of what is true that I can't believe I wasted 2 hours of my life reading it.
September 26, 2015
A truly, truly stupid book.
September 29, 2015
I wish I didn't agree with the naysayers on this one for a couple of reasons, the first being that I really like Morrissey and it's possible I always will, even though lately he has, well, stumbled a little bit - it happens, it happens. The second reason would be that I, as a Morrissey collector, have spent money on both the digital and physical versions of this book (why? because he's never disappointed me this badly before). But oh dear Moz, what a mess this is.
I'm not sure if there is even a story - maybe that's why there is no plot summary in the back pages? I know there are characters, but what happens with them is a bit unclear, it's all muddy among a very verbose prose with some puns and silly alliterations that I'm surprised passed through what I thought was a high standart on Morrissey's part. Have I missed the point entirely? Surely it's not for lack of knowledge of his work.
The narrator is confusing and more often than not he doesn't talk about the story - which is almost a good thing, since the story (and characters) are so uninteresting and depthless. Whatever good is found in this book is found in parts where the narrator talks about life in general - but then again the narrator, which is clearly Morrissey, keeps touching on animal issues and don't get me wrong (Morrissey has made me turned vegetarian ten years ago, so my vegetarian credentials are in order: meat is murder, yes), but enough of that! What does animal rights and vegan talk have to do with the story at hand? At times I admit my eyes slipped through the lines in diagonal in search of the end of the paragraph, for I sensed keeping on reading what I was reading was simply a waste of time.
Yes, some quotes here and there are nice - but you are bound to find that number in most Morrissey lyrics, and the good doesn't outweigh the bad - not even close - in this, the weakest thing Morrissey has ever released. Hey, at least it's short! Only read this if you're a completist.
I'm not sure if there is even a story - maybe that's why there is no plot summary in the back pages? I know there are characters, but what happens with them is a bit unclear, it's all muddy among a very verbose prose with some puns and silly alliterations that I'm surprised passed through what I thought was a high standart on Morrissey's part. Have I missed the point entirely? Surely it's not for lack of knowledge of his work.
The narrator is confusing and more often than not he doesn't talk about the story - which is almost a good thing, since the story (and characters) are so uninteresting and depthless. Whatever good is found in this book is found in parts where the narrator talks about life in general - but then again the narrator, which is clearly Morrissey, keeps touching on animal issues and don't get me wrong (Morrissey has made me turned vegetarian ten years ago, so my vegetarian credentials are in order: meat is murder, yes), but enough of that! What does animal rights and vegan talk have to do with the story at hand? At times I admit my eyes slipped through the lines in diagonal in search of the end of the paragraph, for I sensed keeping on reading what I was reading was simply a waste of time.
Yes, some quotes here and there are nice - but you are bound to find that number in most Morrissey lyrics, and the good doesn't outweigh the bad - not even close - in this, the weakest thing Morrissey has ever released. Hey, at least it's short! Only read this if you're a completist.
October 13, 2015
Wow, this book has a lot of hate. Which is what happens I guess when Morrissey writes something or says something or eats something or...anyway I digress. So at first I was a bit put off; it's verbose, it's dense, it's...a bit boring. We'd already learned before that Mr. Moz doesn't particularly care for indentation. I stuck with with it, 'cause hello, Morrissey wrote it! And it's like barely over 100 pages long.
Every time I picked the book up, I found myself really getting into it after a page or two. Morrissey definitely has his own style (which is to be expected), but it reminded me of Beat fiction. It's just a different rhythm than everything else. There's lots of alliteration and snappy little lyrical (!) phrases. As for the story, it's a moment in time, turning this way and that way and this way and that way, rather unexpectedly.
So it's not the greatest work of literature ever, so what? I didn't expect it to be. I think it's clear Moz enjoyed writing it and it's rather refreshing to read a piece of writing that's so unusual from everything else. It's also great that people feel so free to completely tear down an artist's work. Ah, people's opinions, where would we be without them?
Every time I picked the book up, I found myself really getting into it after a page or two. Morrissey definitely has his own style (which is to be expected), but it reminded me of Beat fiction. It's just a different rhythm than everything else. There's lots of alliteration and snappy little lyrical (!) phrases. As for the story, it's a moment in time, turning this way and that way and this way and that way, rather unexpectedly.
So it's not the greatest work of literature ever, so what? I didn't expect it to be. I think it's clear Moz enjoyed writing it and it's rather refreshing to read a piece of writing that's so unusual from everything else. It's also great that people feel so free to completely tear down an artist's work. Ah, people's opinions, where would we be without them?
January 9, 2016
just couldn't get into this book sorry .. book so disjointed
September 26, 2015
I didn't go into the book with high hopes, but I was expecting something better than this. It's 120 or so pages of complete self indulgence, with a laughable plot and thinly veiled self insert characters and opinions. Although his writing style in Autobiography was confusing, List of the Lost is almost unreadable, with the narrator and characters going off on unnecessary tangents. Morrissey should either hire an editor, or stick to doing what he does best, writing about himself.
September 28, 2015
When you see an idol falter, you want to carry its wings and see it through. I was even prepared to give Morrissey a free pass here, based on my love for his lyrics and even for the semi-flawed last part of his otherwise brilliant "Autobiography". So, what did we face from this book?
Many reviewers seem to avoid the fact that Morrissey has actually written a couple of short books before having his autobiography published. This, however, is his first non-lyrical, fictional offering to the world.
The start was promising. A gang of men, runners all, are described using various inflections and rhymes, recalling William Faulkner and dadaistic poets, as dialogue is spurted out. Sentences like the following are often found:
To me, the first half of the book seemed more like an attempt to use clever wordplay to parlay Morrissey's own views of the world, by generally rephrasing his thoughts on murdering animals, on judges, on women, et cetera, rather than making a book come together.
In my view, the most obvious problem with this book, is that the author has simply not learned to write as a professional, and it shows, both in style and editing. Even though sentences and stanzas are beautiful to read and will be long-lasting, the book does not hold up as a whole, which pains me to say. Where Morrissey single-handedly revived lyrical writing where the whole musical universe is concerned, and made his autobiography light up the literary world some (where musical artists' autobiographies are concerned, especially), this tome is cracked.
I feel that Morrissey has tried hard to write this, while acting complacently and lacklustre with parts that clearly did require fierce editing prior to publication. He introduces the book by thanking his editor, who also edited "Autobiography", but I would like to hold her - and Penguin - to the wall for this.
So, how about that writing?
At the start of the book, Morrissey veers between describing the youthful men and their physical apotheosis, and also poetically describes the inevitable human physical downfall:
Morrissey inevitably delves into gender, where men are irrevocably hailed and women are looked down upon, lost and not at all interesting, which has drawn a fair amount of criticism where writers feel Morrissey is a misogynist. The Daily Beast's article about this, titelled "Morrissey’s First Novel ‘List of the Lost’ Is a Bizarre, Misogynistic Ramble", makes valid points. Even though many an apologist may excuse Morrissey by saying he has simply painted a portrait where the characters of his book think and say these things, the fact remains, that men are intricately looked into, where women are frowned upon in a variety of disdainful ways. Examples of this:
Of Margaret Thatcher:
There are some beautiful one-liners found throughout the book:
It is impossible for Morrissey to deviate from his own persona. As he is a staunch vegetarian, the matter of animals being slaughtered by humans pops up from time to time:
He even gets in words about people whom he has hailed throughout his existence, e.g. Buffy Sainte-Marie and James Baldwin, paired with his hatred for the monarchy and the justice system. It could have been used better, instead of making me feel as though the book, at times, is another blog platform for Morrissey.
Some sections of the book are plainly confusing, e.g. one about former president Ronald Reagan, gender and the fictive Cartwright family:
And let's not miss what I think is the most written-about stanza in the whole of the book:
Well, bulbous salutation confronted, I will choose to put the wording out of my mind for now.
All in all, this is a fairly muddled ride through Morrissey's mind, rather than through a slew of sporting men and their lives. Opportunities came knocking, were wasted yet some shimmer like diamonds in the sky.
Many reviewers seem to avoid the fact that Morrissey has actually written a couple of short books before having his autobiography published. This, however, is his first non-lyrical, fictional offering to the world.
The start was promising. A gang of men, runners all, are described using various inflections and rhymes, recalling William Faulkner and dadaistic poets, as dialogue is spurted out. Sentences like the following are often found:
Surrounded by women, some mechanically minded, some badly made-up, and all envious of one another, the boys had heartily gnawed at their iron bars and unwisely allowed alcohol a free dash at their brains because things overall mattered a little less since their track timings were now a bed of roses and their overall fitness boomed good times ahead, and what harm would a little devilment do?
To me, the first half of the book seemed more like an attempt to use clever wordplay to parlay Morrissey's own views of the world, by generally rephrasing his thoughts on murdering animals, on judges, on women, et cetera, rather than making a book come together.
In my view, the most obvious problem with this book, is that the author has simply not learned to write as a professional, and it shows, both in style and editing. Even though sentences and stanzas are beautiful to read and will be long-lasting, the book does not hold up as a whole, which pains me to say. Where Morrissey single-handedly revived lyrical writing where the whole musical universe is concerned, and made his autobiography light up the literary world some (where musical artists' autobiographies are concerned, especially), this tome is cracked.
I feel that Morrissey has tried hard to write this, while acting complacently and lacklustre with parts that clearly did require fierce editing prior to publication. He introduces the book by thanking his editor, who also edited "Autobiography", but I would like to hold her - and Penguin - to the wall for this.
So, how about that writing?
At the start of the book, Morrissey veers between describing the youthful men and their physical apotheosis, and also poetically describes the inevitable human physical downfall:
Look at them now in their manful splendor and wonder how it is that they could possibly part this earth in dirt, as creased corpses, falling back as the skeletons that we already are, yet hidden behind musculature that will fall in time at life’s finishing line.
[...]
It is certainly something to dwell excitedly within a body that fully and proudly shows whatever the person is, since we all, for the most part, struggle in haunted fashion, unaware of ourselves as flesh, looking at a future that does not show promise, or back at a past that couldn’t provide any, and permanently petrified at passing through without ever having lived.
[...]
The body is a thing only, of which we all irrationally fear … how to control, how to control … that which controls us.
Morrissey inevitably delves into gender, where men are irrevocably hailed and women are looked down upon, lost and not at all interesting, which has drawn a fair amount of criticism where writers feel Morrissey is a misogynist. The Daily Beast's article about this, titelled "Morrissey’s First Novel ‘List of the Lost’ Is a Bizarre, Misogynistic Ramble", makes valid points. Even though many an apologist may excuse Morrissey by saying he has simply painted a portrait where the characters of his book think and say these things, the fact remains, that men are intricately looked into, where women are frowned upon in a variety of disdainful ways. Examples of this:
Although the publicly confessed lust of the man must always be made to seem ridiculous and prepubescent, the lust of the woman is at first childlike and desperate – as if they know there is something about which they know nothing, and this itch takes on the aggressive – which almost never works.
Women are less of a mystery because their methods and bodies have been over-sold, whereas the male body speaks as the voice calls a halt.
Of Margaret Thatcher:
I hate womb-men like that…they just can’t wait to be one of the boys…and just watch, if she becomes prime minister she won’t hire any women into her government. Why do I even care? I mean, just look at her face.
There are some beautiful one-liners found throughout the book:
Justice and the law are two entirely different things.
Unless I am with you I shall never be where I belong.
Look at the blue of the sky and tell me why you held back. Did you think there would one day be a bluer sky and a better hour?
“I thought you’d said goodbye?” said Nails, nursing his hand. “Nails. To you … someone will always be saying goodbye …” Rims threw his final dart. With that he walked away.
It is impossible for Morrissey to deviate from his own persona. As he is a staunch vegetarian, the matter of animals being slaughtered by humans pops up from time to time:
In the church of secret service known as the abattoir this is exactly what humans excitedly do to beautiful bodies of animals who were also crafted in care by some divine creationist, yet at the human hand the animals are whacked and hacked into chopped meat whilst gazing up at their protector with disbelief and pleading for a mercy not familiar to the human spirit, ground and round into hash or stew for the Big Mac pleasure of fat-podge children whose candidature for roly-poly vicious porkiness makes their plungingly plump parents laugh loudly, as little junior blubber-guts orders yet another Superburger with tub-of-guts determination to stuff death into round bellies, and such kids come to resemble their parents as ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.
He even gets in words about people whom he has hailed throughout his existence, e.g. Buffy Sainte-Marie and James Baldwin, paired with his hatred for the monarchy and the justice system. It could have been used better, instead of making me feel as though the book, at times, is another blog platform for Morrissey.
Some sections of the book are plainly confusing, e.g. one about former president Ronald Reagan, gender and the fictive Cartwright family:
Reagan has no time for black power, women’s rights, gay liberation, animal rights, anti-war rallies or student demonstrations. He contrasts all of the exciting changes that made America new again, and he offers old-fashioned power-politics, the type of which must always keep a profitable war on the go … everything old (including himself ) sold off like fake insurance to the all-powerful conglomerate America of Bonanza, a rich and expertly presented daily television drama where cow-rustling Ben Cartwright lives handsomely with his three sons (none of whom share one single gene, since all three are of different mothers, and, magically, all three mothers are either dead or hidden behind studio curtains).
[...]
and although deity Ben Cartwright had fathered three sons from three women who had usefully dissolved into tumbleweed, his three strapping sons themselves do not reproduce and almost never pair off for passionate romance.
And let's not miss what I think is the most written-about stanza in the whole of the book:
At this, Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it whacked and smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone. Both fell awkwardly off the bed, each tending to their own anguish yet still laughing an impaired discomfort of giggles whilst curving into a hunched disadvantage.
Well, bulbous salutation confronted, I will choose to put the wording out of my mind for now.
All in all, this is a fairly muddled ride through Morrissey's mind, rather than through a slew of sporting men and their lives. Opportunities came knocking, were wasted yet some shimmer like diamonds in the sky.
October 12, 2015
I decided to leave a review because my opinion may be quite unpopular.
Let's begin by saying that I truly love Morrissey, as he has been a huge influence on my life and his music - his lyrics in particular - and his whole persona left an indelible mark on me.
He made me feel less alone.
He managed to express those feelings of intrinsic sadness and emotional alienation that had always haunted me, but that I wasn't able to pinpoint.
I read his autobiography and even though I found it a bit unorganized, almost incoherent at times, I enjoyed it and I couldn't wait to get my hands on his upcoming novel.
When "List of the Lost" came out, I wasn't able to get it straightaway, but articles and reviews kept popping up on my facebook feeds and each one of them seemed to agree on one point: it was bad. Really bad.
I even became hesitant about actually reading it because I didn't want it to negatively impact my opinion on Morrissey's literary abilities.
The thing is, I always like to see things for myself to form my own point of view and so I finally did, even in this case.
Today I sat, read the whole thing... and I liked it.
Now don't get me wrong, that sex scene was embarrassing to say the least and there's no excuse for that ("Bulbous salutation"? Really??).
The writing style is quite pretentious, but I think it's always the right balance between pretentious and clever.
"I could be at home pulverizing my wife at Scrabble, or scrabbling my pulverized wife".
"Whoever put the pain in painting had also put the fun in funeral".
Quotes like these remind me a lot of Oscar Wilde, who is, coincidentally, one of Morrissey's biggest idols.
Rants are also abundant, but I personally think that that's one thing you either love or loathe.
I love it, and there's not much I can do about it.
In conclusion, I think the whole novel is not meant to be taken seriously at all. It should instead be seen as a literary experiment.
I mean, it's classified as "gothic", and gothic literature can be quite absurd.
He's not being pompous, he's just being Morrissey.
Let's begin by saying that I truly love Morrissey, as he has been a huge influence on my life and his music - his lyrics in particular - and his whole persona left an indelible mark on me.
He made me feel less alone.
He managed to express those feelings of intrinsic sadness and emotional alienation that had always haunted me, but that I wasn't able to pinpoint.
I read his autobiography and even though I found it a bit unorganized, almost incoherent at times, I enjoyed it and I couldn't wait to get my hands on his upcoming novel.
When "List of the Lost" came out, I wasn't able to get it straightaway, but articles and reviews kept popping up on my facebook feeds and each one of them seemed to agree on one point: it was bad. Really bad.
I even became hesitant about actually reading it because I didn't want it to negatively impact my opinion on Morrissey's literary abilities.
The thing is, I always like to see things for myself to form my own point of view and so I finally did, even in this case.
Today I sat, read the whole thing... and I liked it.
Now don't get me wrong, that sex scene was embarrassing to say the least and there's no excuse for that ("Bulbous salutation"? Really??).
The writing style is quite pretentious, but I think it's always the right balance between pretentious and clever.
"I could be at home pulverizing my wife at Scrabble, or scrabbling my pulverized wife".
"Whoever put the pain in painting had also put the fun in funeral".
Quotes like these remind me a lot of Oscar Wilde, who is, coincidentally, one of Morrissey's biggest idols.
Rants are also abundant, but I personally think that that's one thing you either love or loathe.
I love it, and there's not much I can do about it.
In conclusion, I think the whole novel is not meant to be taken seriously at all. It should instead be seen as a literary experiment.
I mean, it's classified as "gothic", and gothic literature can be quite absurd.
He's not being pompous, he's just being Morrissey.
September 28, 2015
Honestly,this is one of the very worst books I have ever read.The characters are so under-developed they were embryonic and each turn of the plot was more ludicrous than the last.Horribly weak and clearly a vanity project for Morrissey.I hope to never read the phrase 'womb-men'again,shudder.
October 23, 2016
After discerning so many negative reviews, I was initially repelled and wanted nothing to do with this book whatsoever. However, after a while - as is the case with most books - I simply ignored everybody else's opinion and decided to judge for myself, and I can tell you what a great decision this was.
But do not expect the List of the Lost to be a typical novel, by any means, for it is not. It's morbid, dull at times and Morrissey's incessant use of big words are ultimately nothing but fillers. The plot is obscure and the characters are unrelatable and plain bizarre; but the book itself, to me, was very alluring and I was able to finish within the space of two hours. Why? Because it was unconventional and that's what made it fascinating. The same applies to certain art, movies and music: it is often the unconventional type which is the most beguiling to some because it's deemed as rare.
Conclusively, I gave this book a solid 4/5 stars because it was unique, and offers the reader something fresh rather than the same recycled rubbish which is often spewed out by novelists who are inspired by your generic mainstream authors - hence the recurrent sense of déjà vu.
But do not expect the List of the Lost to be a typical novel, by any means, for it is not. It's morbid, dull at times and Morrissey's incessant use of big words are ultimately nothing but fillers. The plot is obscure and the characters are unrelatable and plain bizarre; but the book itself, to me, was very alluring and I was able to finish within the space of two hours. Why? Because it was unconventional and that's what made it fascinating. The same applies to certain art, movies and music: it is often the unconventional type which is the most beguiling to some because it's deemed as rare.
Conclusively, I gave this book a solid 4/5 stars because it was unique, and offers the reader something fresh rather than the same recycled rubbish which is often spewed out by novelists who are inspired by your generic mainstream authors - hence the recurrent sense of déjà vu.
September 25, 2015
List Of The Lost's bizarre plot line is incidental to its main focus: ranting. Morrissey confirms his dislike for the meat industry, the justice system and Margaret Thatcher. Also he really does not care for Bonanza.
I laughed out loud several times, yet the book contains no comedic moments.
Two stars is a bit generous, but it's *Morrissey* and the cover design's brilliant.
I laughed out loud several times, yet the book contains no comedic moments.
Two stars is a bit generous, but it's *Morrissey* and the cover design's brilliant.
October 7, 2015
I've read worse books. That said, Morrissey unfortunately used a novel set in the mid-1970s, Boston to espouse views he has far more eloquently shared in songs. Much of the book is written in exhaustive (and exhausting) diatribes that do little to further the plot. When they do, everything feels so stilted that it seems implausible.
Read
December 5, 2015Absolute garbage, no stars. Run on sentences, run on paragraphs, a story that makes little sense and one hell of a funny ending! Seriously, the worst book I have ever read, to date.
November 12, 2017
Genuinely the worst thing I’ve ever read.
September 26, 2016
Full disclosure. Big Morrissey fan. Loved Autobiography. Even the courtroom sequence, which everyone else appeared to find utterly soporific, I found dramatic and involving. To say I’ve been looking forward to reading List of the Lost is a bit of an understatement. Only the return of Twin Peaks has my breath equally bated.
And there are similarities with David Lynch, here. The book does not fully explain itself, it leaves you with questions, and there are things that just are. There is a dark force at work for which there is no Judaeo-Christian rationale. It’s almost as if, when the filth-encrusted, plot-propelling wretch appears, physically reminiscent of the thing behind the diner in Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, it’s the universe’s response to the very existence of the four central characters and their prime-of-life perfection. It’s as if tragedy simply must befall them. Too beautiful to live. And not just physically beautiful. Ezra, Nails, Harri and Justy are possessed of beautiful minds, or at the very least pretty minds. They converse in well-crafted sentences. They fizz with wit and intelligence. They are, as would be expected of Morrissey, quite Wildean characters. In fact, there is something quite theatrical in the way the dialogue is delivered, ranging from pithy put-downs and playful retorts to lengthy, and often raging, soliloquys.
This is an angry book. Death is never glorious; it is always tawdry and revolting. Age doesn’t bring wisdom, only physical dilapidation, indignity and a sense of missed opportunity. The meat industry takes a beating, as does the royal family and the political elite.
And this is where the book becomes frustrating and fascinating in equal measure. There are times when Morrissey intrudes on the narrative. In fact, intrudes is too timid a word. Morrissey boots down the door of the narrative, storms in shouting and waving his fist, turning over furniture and generally causing mayhem. It’s as if he’s turned-up drunk and angry at a performance of his own play, roaring from the stalls to paraphrase Lucky Lisp. Although there were times I thought, Oh, Morrissey, I really wish you wouldn’t, I have to admit it was just as often enthralling. I can’t imagine Morrissey leafing through a novel-writing instruction manual. Or I can imagine him leafing through a novel-writing instruction manual and saying, “Why should I?” Morrissey has never played by the rules, so why should we expect him to show-not-tell, for example.
If List of the Lost obeys any instruction it is this, from Oscar Wilde: “An educated person’s ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends.”
List of the Lost is without doubt something that “has never been” before. The writing is dense but, on the whole, flowing; and there are passages of quite dazzling prose punctuated by moments of poetry, with almost beatnik rhymes dropped into the proceedings. The mood is dark. At times the book feels like a non-genre horror novel, reminding me in that respect of Glen Duncan’s Weathercock. There is a pervading sense of doom, a sense that nothing good can last. But there are lighter moments, ironically from the washed-up Rims, the coach, whose vigorous sarcasm had me laughing out loud. In fact, I would say Rims is the core of the book, a dense mass of disappointment and bitterness, leavened with a sharpness of tongue.
This is a flawed and idiosyncratic book. It certainly isn’t an easy read. But I can’t remember the last time I read a novel and didn’t quite know what to make of it. It really is quite unlike anything I’ve ever read before. For that, thank you Morrissey.
And there are similarities with David Lynch, here. The book does not fully explain itself, it leaves you with questions, and there are things that just are. There is a dark force at work for which there is no Judaeo-Christian rationale. It’s almost as if, when the filth-encrusted, plot-propelling wretch appears, physically reminiscent of the thing behind the diner in Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, it’s the universe’s response to the very existence of the four central characters and their prime-of-life perfection. It’s as if tragedy simply must befall them. Too beautiful to live. And not just physically beautiful. Ezra, Nails, Harri and Justy are possessed of beautiful minds, or at the very least pretty minds. They converse in well-crafted sentences. They fizz with wit and intelligence. They are, as would be expected of Morrissey, quite Wildean characters. In fact, there is something quite theatrical in the way the dialogue is delivered, ranging from pithy put-downs and playful retorts to lengthy, and often raging, soliloquys.
This is an angry book. Death is never glorious; it is always tawdry and revolting. Age doesn’t bring wisdom, only physical dilapidation, indignity and a sense of missed opportunity. The meat industry takes a beating, as does the royal family and the political elite.
And this is where the book becomes frustrating and fascinating in equal measure. There are times when Morrissey intrudes on the narrative. In fact, intrudes is too timid a word. Morrissey boots down the door of the narrative, storms in shouting and waving his fist, turning over furniture and generally causing mayhem. It’s as if he’s turned-up drunk and angry at a performance of his own play, roaring from the stalls to paraphrase Lucky Lisp. Although there were times I thought, Oh, Morrissey, I really wish you wouldn’t, I have to admit it was just as often enthralling. I can’t imagine Morrissey leafing through a novel-writing instruction manual. Or I can imagine him leafing through a novel-writing instruction manual and saying, “Why should I?” Morrissey has never played by the rules, so why should we expect him to show-not-tell, for example.
If List of the Lost obeys any instruction it is this, from Oscar Wilde: “An educated person’s ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends.”
List of the Lost is without doubt something that “has never been” before. The writing is dense but, on the whole, flowing; and there are passages of quite dazzling prose punctuated by moments of poetry, with almost beatnik rhymes dropped into the proceedings. The mood is dark. At times the book feels like a non-genre horror novel, reminding me in that respect of Glen Duncan’s Weathercock. There is a pervading sense of doom, a sense that nothing good can last. But there are lighter moments, ironically from the washed-up Rims, the coach, whose vigorous sarcasm had me laughing out loud. In fact, I would say Rims is the core of the book, a dense mass of disappointment and bitterness, leavened with a sharpness of tongue.
This is a flawed and idiosyncratic book. It certainly isn’t an easy read. But I can’t remember the last time I read a novel and didn’t quite know what to make of it. It really is quite unlike anything I’ve ever read before. For that, thank you Morrissey.
December 5, 2017
I started reading this book genuinely wanting to like it -- partly to counter the wave of negative press and reviews, partly because I'm a fan of Morrissey's music (although NOT his public persona), and partly because it is a very different, unique work with a truly unusual writing style. However, I can't get past how the moderately intriguing plot regularly collapses into nonsensical screeds -- sometimes from the narrator (who I picture as some sort of omniscient mega-Morrissey) while other times from random characters.
The story inexplicably takes place in a version of 1975 Boston where people care a little too much about the politics and history of England and animal rights to be anything other than the author's sock puppets. The animal rights screeds are particularly odd, since they display a knowledge of nature equivalent to someone who's read a few "top 10 animal facts" clickbait articles online. (Does Morrissey genuinely believe that animals go out of their way to help each other? I'm confused how he processes the knowledge that animals in nature do, in face, compete and even eat each other. Denial, perhaps?)
I was leaning towards a three star review, due to some interesting turns of phrase and some genuinely emotional observations about youth and aging. The core story of a college track team hammered by tragedy after tragedy is not exactly original, but there's something entertaining about the glee with which the author bombards them with despair-inducing events at what should be the cusp of a glorious moment in their lives. But there's an element of this book that I just can't get past: despite the LGBT rights messages sprinkled in here and there, Morrissey portrays many gay characters (or historical figures) as repressed, monstrous, molesting villains. Really, Morrissey? Are you trying to make a point, or just unconsciously falling into the same narrative trap you're trying to denounce?
Final observation: the quote on the back of the book is, of course, from Morrissey himself. Do you think he appreciates the irony that the habit of quoting oneself on the back of your book is a feature he shares with Mr. Trump?
[This book satisfies the Book Riot "Read Harder" 2017 challenging of reading a debut novel.]
The story inexplicably takes place in a version of 1975 Boston where people care a little too much about the politics and history of England and animal rights to be anything other than the author's sock puppets. The animal rights screeds are particularly odd, since they display a knowledge of nature equivalent to someone who's read a few "top 10 animal facts" clickbait articles online. (Does Morrissey genuinely believe that animals go out of their way to help each other? I'm confused how he processes the knowledge that animals in nature do, in face, compete and even eat each other. Denial, perhaps?)
I was leaning towards a three star review, due to some interesting turns of phrase and some genuinely emotional observations about youth and aging. The core story of a college track team hammered by tragedy after tragedy is not exactly original, but there's something entertaining about the glee with which the author bombards them with despair-inducing events at what should be the cusp of a glorious moment in their lives. But there's an element of this book that I just can't get past: despite the LGBT rights messages sprinkled in here and there, Morrissey portrays many gay characters (or historical figures) as repressed, monstrous, molesting villains. Really, Morrissey? Are you trying to make a point, or just unconsciously falling into the same narrative trap you're trying to denounce?
Final observation: the quote on the back of the book is, of course, from Morrissey himself. Do you think he appreciates the irony that the habit of quoting oneself on the back of your book is a feature he shares with Mr. Trump?
[This book satisfies the Book Riot "Read Harder" 2017 challenging of reading a debut novel.]
October 12, 2015
This is a tough book to write a review on, but I'll try to say a few things. First of all, I did not at all find it as bad as it was rumoured to be. I actually liked it. Although it is a short novel at only 118 pages, it is no easy read. It takes time if you want to understand what is going on. Which is pretty hard even then, since the plot is confusing and almost nonexistent. But the words....oh, how I love the words and wisdom of Morrissey. It is beautifully written, it is captivating and thoughtful. Yes, it is weird and calling it a novel might be a bit off, cause it feels more like reading essays or poetry, but I enjoyed it. You might have to be a Morrissey fan to understand this book, I would not recommend it to someone who has never listened to a Moz album. I love Moz and I found this to be a decent and poetic read.
April 26, 2016
Writers, after learning their craft (Caffeine and Cruelty 101), honing their craftsmanship (deer-headlighted in the peer-review room), standing in line and receiving their signed and stamped sheepskin (and how appropriate that: "here you go - you passed muster - you are now one of the sheep", the college cognoscenti seem to be chortling and chuckling under their bacon-hot breath during their centuries-ripe overritualized ritual, standing there on stage belovedly bare-bottomed beneath their blood-black robes) are told to "forget what they know" about writing and just write.
Well, dear readers, forget what you know about reading and just read this high-octane cocktail of Whartonian mirth and Burroughsian mayhem from the Mage of Manchester.
Well, dear readers, forget what you know about reading and just read this high-octane cocktail of Whartonian mirth and Burroughsian mayhem from the Mage of Manchester.
September 28, 2015
It would have been kinder to not rate this at all.
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