This is very interesting, because I always thought Morrissey's lyrics, since the first one I read in 1987 (There is a Light That Never Goes Out), I felt it had something almost surreally, timeless, e.g. not-eithties to it. I happen to be a French PhD who loves 19th century France - and Greek too - and I was astounded to see how his style carries so fully that Proust's melancholia and underlining social criticism or Baudelaire's acerbic view of love. But what astounded me the most is that Baudelaire wrote a poem called The Litanies of Satan (Les Litanies de Satan if a French person can translate this better that I can) that pays a tribute to a blue-eyed, soft-spoken and tall man, Satan, who is here, to console humans from the miseries of an overly puritanic French bourgoisie from Baudelaire's period...Not to mention Théophile Gautier, Maupassant, who, in a less witty or acerbic style, went from heartbreak to heartbreak trying in vain to find love in a society they found frugal and loveless. Moz IS an ancient, romantic soul - in a modern cover.

ive been readin a lot of Byron lately and apart from all the sex he exudes Moz. especially in his letters, they read like Morrissey's interviews. the charm and snipping wit, the slight indications at his bouts with depression- laughed off- very Moz. Moz is the non-sexual Byronic hero.

Oh, but Morrissey would disagree: His name would've been Oscar Wilde.

I mean, who is he? Is he an agent? pls inform me, hehe..:)
My appreciation to some one who will help me...

I just read the unedited transcripts of Oscar Wilde's trial, and for the life of me I can't believe how much Morrissey's speech resembles Wilde's. Scathing, witty, yet strangely gentle at the same time - It's uncanny. Also, I believe that Wilde was always trying to get people to read between the lines in much the same way that Mozzer always has.

As for Byron - He was considered the most attractive man of his time. He was obsessively pursued by men and women alike, and relentlessly hounded by the press. He was, as has been observed many times, the first international superstar - a man whose intense sensuality was matched only by his love of words and his passion for politics. Hmmm...

I would add to this list the fictional Duc des Esseintes, from the book A rebours (Against Nature) by J. K. Huysmans. Moz is the quintessential modern Decadent, without the cruelty. A relentless, sensitive soul for whom beauty and longing are both antidote to and refuge from a hopelessly mediocre, disappointing world.

Moz - you are one for the ages...

I`ve never really thought of Byron in relation to the Moz, despite having a brief Byron-fetish at around the same time i got into Moz himself.

Byron is too butch, non-ironic, "grand" to have much in common I think. Can you really imagine Byron celebrating awkward manners, reticent unfullfillment and working-class environments? I think not.

I think literary speaking you'd get a sense of Moz if you stuck the following into a blender:-

Oscar Wilde, Philip Larkin, (E) Bronte, Dorothy Parker, Alan Silitoe, Thomas Hardy, Richard Allen, Elizabeth Smart, Jean Genet, Radclyffe Hall, Hubert Selby

Anyone add anyone else??

Let's put his literary luvvieness into perspective here. By the time he was twenty years old S.P had written two biographies(Jimmy Dean and The New York Dolls), various essays on Hollywood Starlets (if I recollect correctly one is called 'Enter Talking') and a play set in Manhattan called 'Sic Transit Gloria Mundae' (trans: So passes the glory of the world).

By any stretch of the imagination these would be major achievements for the average teenager - but as we now know, the adolescent Mr. Morrissey was not your ordinary common garden dirt bag. Firstly, his humble background was not propitious to a literary career, yet despite leaving school with a single O Level in 'Sea Shell Lamp' making he produced manuscripts worthy of an Oxford don.

I have read most the above works and there is absolutely nothing there to be ashamed of. He should feel pride not shame with regards to these fruits of his well spent youth and I still fail to see why he threatens legal action when these works have shown up intermittently over the years. If we accept implicitly that he wrote these works entirely on his own and did not copy them verbatim from other sources, we could say that he had the potential to be a great academic had he gone to University. His talent shun brightly in these tomes.

Tony Wilson (founder of Factory Records) once said that Morrissey could have been the 'male Jeanette Winterton'. By that logic JW could have been the 'female Morrissey'! Methinks not. In the same way that she is a gifted novelist and not an entertainer, Morrissey does not have the Big Novel inside him. He has the essay, the poem, the biography, autobiography, and tomorrow's grocery list at Marks&Spencers inside him - but not the Big Novel! If he did, he would have published at least one work of fiction by this stage in his life.

I see Morrissey as more the highly preserved/non suicidal Thomas Chatteron type; the pale, wan, and languid young boy from Bristol who poisoned himself when he couldn't find a publisher for his poetry after moving to ghastly Victorian London. Almost like Chatterton (but still alive obviously), he is stretched out on the chaise lounge at the Opium Den, in a benign state of eurphoria, wryly anticipating either his next act of carnal debauchery or his next puff on the pipe.

Morrissey is the classic dandy fop, who scribbles here and dabbles there and though he has great stamina and energy to perform live on stage around the world for months on end (I myself get a touch of the vapours on seeing his touring schedules), I don't think he's the type that would spend six months in a darkened room cobbling together a 'Wuthering Heights' or a 'War and Peace'. Quite frankly I don't think he has the intellectual discipline to be a novelist.

Yes we could have lost him to Academia, or possibly minor literary success, but I think we are blessed that for all his literary ambitions, he found expression for his gifts in the superficial pop world where he found himself as a prophet and sage incongrously positioned in a fluffy insincere world, where his poetic words influenced and inspired millions of people - the kind of people like me who never read poetry books.

In comparison the readers of Jeanette Winterson's books are a tiny village nowhere on the map.

The question is are the Shakespeares' and Oscar Wildes' of our times in the Pop/Rock/Rap world or the elitist Literary World. That is the question.

Dear Friends,

Have you heard the song "Seymour Stein" by B&S?

Of course, you all know the reference to the Smiths- about Johnny Marr before he went electronic???

Can someone help me out here?

With love,
Ken Stavitzke

Who told you?
His Mom?