Ask almost anyone who grew up a social outcast in the 1980s, and they’ll all tell you the same thing: The Smiths saved their lives. Whether they were downcast, opinionated girls with asymmetrical hair or sexually frustrated boys curiously fondling the British guitar band’s first album with its intoxicatingly blue-tinted cover art of a meaty, shirtless Joe Dallesandro, Smiths fans were smitten to the point of obsession. They hung on lead singer Morrissey’s every razor-sharp, perverse, literary lyric and drew strength from the man’s absolute disassociation from all that was cruel and crass about that decade. The “son and heir of nothing in particular,” as Morrissey called himself in the Smiths’ biggest hit, “How Soon Is Now,” was their fey, fearless leader.

And according to queer British writer Mark Simpson’s desperately readable new book—the not so tongue-in-cheekily titled Saint Morrissey—the Smiths’ front man was and still is the author’s one true love. Equal parts biography, sociology text, and mash note, Saint Morrissey is the most complete account yet of Morrissey’s influence on pop music and a fervent memoir of fandom.

Each stage of the artist’s life is subject to Simpson’s adoring yet clear-eyed gaze, including Morrissey’s famously celibate status as a sexual outsider—the man has always cocked an eyebrow at anything so mundane as “coming out.” As Simpson argues, desire and refusal are Morrissey’s two-decade-long theses, and to resolve those issues, boxed and neat, might fracture his public’s fascinated gaze and desire to know more about him.

In any case, it has always been Moz’s music that has provided the clearest window into what the man is thinking. On the first track of his new album, You Are the Quarry, a song called “America Is Not the World,” he promptly sets the record straight about one lifestyle change that has particularly puzzled fans: his move from gloomy England to sunny Los Angeles.

One listen to lyrics like “America, your head’s too big, because America, your belly’s too big…the land of the free, they said, and of opportunity in a just and a truthful way / But where the president is never black or female or gay / And until that day you’ve got nothing to say to me to help me believe in America”—all of which is followed with an “I love you” coda—and it’s clear that however much his fans may miss the chiming guitars of former Smiths collaborator Johnny Marr, their real hero’s poison pen is still plugged in.

The usual Morrissey concerns hold sway here, growing and aging with him but never sounding redundant. After all, just because you’re in your 40s doesn’t mean you can’t still hate organized religion (“I Have Forgiven Jesus”), indulge in neurotic romances (“I Like You”), or detest the world’s population of crashing bores (“The World Is Full of Crashing Bores”). Middle age has brought no contentment to the man still grappling with “the squalor of the mind” (“You Know I Couldn’t Last”). And his fans wouldn’t want it any other way.

White writes about film for E! Online.