Scholarly article about "List of the Lost"

Brilliant news for fans of List of the Lost and academic / literary analysis*: a new article by Brontë Schiltz has just been published in the Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation, looking at the novel as an example of Queer Gothic fiction. Here's the abstract:

In one of the numerous negative reviews, Michael Hann described singer-songwriter Morrissey’s debut novella, List of the Lost (2015), as “an unpolished turd of a book, the stale excrement of Morrissey’s imagination,” yet from a queer perspective, it is pioneering. This article explores Morrissey’s innovative engagement with Gothic horror, building on his explorations of the mode during his musical career. Throughout the novella, Morrissey subverts numerous Gothic staples, from curative maternity and reproductive futurity to monstrously fragmented subjectivity to condemnations of Catholicism – the latter of which he retains, though to entirely different ends to his Protestant literary ancestors. Through such devices, Morrissey participates in Teresa Goddu’s concept of ‘haunting back,’ turning hostile Gothic tropes on their head to carve out a new space for queer experience within the mode – historically conservative as often as it is transgressive – and reveals the true specter of society to be not difference, but its suppression.

You can read the whole article online here.

*(Yes, this number of actual people is vanishingly small.)
 
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I've always wondered about the "tortuous read" criticism. Is it the prose style that puts people off? Because most readers will say they liked Autobiography, yet the prose style is so similar. I seriously doubt that William Faulkner is an influence of Morrissey's, but they are both criticized for writing tedious prose, and yet (as far as I'm concerned) they both have the ability to infuse their long passages with a beautiful cadence and sagacity that carries the reader through. Faulkner drew from the drawling loquaciousness common to his American South. Morrissey's influences are less obvious, but I think he is stylistically upper-echelon.

For one, he fails to create much in the way of delineation between the characters. They all speak like Morrissey and espouse some form of his worldviews. It's a bit like the scene in Being John Malkovich where the camera pans around the room and every person, man or woman, has John Malkovich's head and speaks in his voice. In Autobiography, fair cop - it's Morrissey's own story to tell. Is it "stylistically upper-echelon" for every character in a novella to read like a cardboard cut-out stand-in for the author? For me, it's a spectacular failure of imagination.

It's also abundantly clear that this piece was not properly edited to any quantitative degree. Plot and quasi-historic essay gracelessly transition hither and yon. Digressions are burped out. I agree there are moments with "beautiful cadence" and the verve of Morrissey at the heights of his lyrical powers shine through - however few and too far in between - but the sum of the parts is not coherent. For something so brief, it felt like it drug on for hundreds of pages. "Tortuous" is a bit hyperbolic but, for me, "deathly dull & repetitive" isn't.
 
For one, he fails to create much in the way of delineation between the characters. They all speak like Morrissey and espouse some form of his worldviews. It's a bit like the scene in Being John Malkovich where the camera pans around the room and every person, man or woman, has John Malkovich's head and speaks in his voice. In Autobiography, fair cop - it's Morrissey's own story to tell. Is it "stylistically upper-echelon" for every character in a novella to read like a cardboard cut-out stand-in for the author? For me, it's a spectacular failure of imagination.

Yes, the dialogue is the criticism with the strongest force. I don't think it's a failure in style so much as it's a peculiar choice. It's not an autobiographical novel; it's more like soapbox as fiction. This is probably down to my own love of Morrissey's voice (both and literal and literary), but I like the choice. I don't think the dialogue is poorly-written, even though it certainly lacks verisimilitude. I suspect the reason it came in for so much condemnation and ridicule from critics is because so many in the establishment have bristled against Morrissey's sermonizing ever since Meat Is Murder. Not that that was necessarily your own view, but it surprises me that the same condemnation (that it was gratuitously overladen with so much of his own interior monologue) is leveled by Morrissey fans.
 
If it had had a great editor...

Remind me – at the time was it the first new novel to ever be published under the "Penguin Classics" banner, or just a rare case?
 
If it had had a great editor...

Remind me – at the time was it the first new novel to ever be published under the "Penguin Classics" banner, or just a rare case?
List of the Lost wasn't published as a Penguin Classic, just a regular standalone Penguin book. Autobiography was the one which was under the Classic imprint, to the chagrin of many...
 
Desperate attempts to evade the points I have made merely concede the argument.

BB
Do they really? Do you know that saying ‘I win’ at the end of every post doesn’t make it true? Fool. PS don’t take so long to think it over.
 
If it had had a great editor...

Remind me – at the time was it the first new novel to ever be published under the "Penguin Classics" banner, or just a rare case?
You’ve been reading Private Eye….
 
At the time Morrissey boasted that one of this demands was that Autobiography and List of the Lost were not edited at all. Which shows on all levels of the writing. Here the usual suspects were aghast when I wrote that even all great authors need an editor to rein them in and separate the good ideas from bad. They thought that would have been censorship.
 
At the time Morrissey boasted that one of this demands was that Autobiography and List of the Lost were not edited at all. Which shows on all levels of the writing. Here the usual suspects were aghast when I wrote that even all great authors need an editor to rein them in and separate the good ideas from bad. They thought that would have been censorship.
Do you have a source for that boast of Morrissey's? (Not doubting you, it's just not something I've seen before and it would be helpful to know!)
 
Do you have a source for that boast of Morrissey's? (Not doubting you, it's just not something I've seen before and it would be helpful to know!)
I tried googling but couldn't come up with anything concrete -- except that many reviews suspected that the books are unedited, which is apparent in the abundance of typos, mixing of American and English grammar and clear mistakes, not to even mention the content. Plus there was speculation that the last minute wrangling was all about Morrissey not wanting his writing touched in any way. He also said something to that effect in some interviews, if I remember correctly, but I can't now locate a source. So perhaps "boasting" was exaggaration on my part, but that's the impression we were given at the time.
 
I tried googling but couldn't come up with anything concrete -- except that many reviews suspected that the books are unedited, which is apparent in the abundance of typos, mixing of American and English grammar and clear mistakes, not to even mention the content. Plus there was speculation that the last minute wrangling was all about Morrissey not wanting his writing touched in any way. He also said something to that effect in some interviews, if I remember correctly, but I can't now locate a source. So perhaps "boasting" was exaggaration on my part, but that's the impression we were given at the time.
Yes, all seems likely, I'm just fascinated by this stuff, by writers who refuse to be edited!
 
Maybe Morrissey had bought into the legend that On the Road had been published unedited, and felt his own work warranted the same privilege. He does have an unreleased song mentioning Kerouac at least in the title. Or James Joyce—was there an editor on Finnegans Wake? How would an editor even proceed there? Not that List of the Lost is remotely similar, but he may be thinking of an instance like that one, if he has this idea of the artist being unfettered, even by the well-intentioned.
 
Maybe Morrissey had bought into the legend that On the Road had been published unedited, and felt his own work warranted the same privilege. He does have an unreleased song mentioning Kerouac at least in the title. Or James Joyce—was there an editor on Finnegans Wake? How would an editor even proceed there? Not that List of the Lost is remotely similar, but he may be thinking of an instance like that one,

if he has this idea of the artist being unfettered, even by the well-intentioned.

yes most likely, and should this be a surprise to anyone?
 
All this jibber-jabber makes me want to re-read the novel in question. I was deeply befuddled by it the first time around back in 2015. I understand most of the criticism directed at the book, but I do feel that had it been written by anyone else, the criticism wouldn’t have been this severe.
 
yes most likely, and should this be a surprise to anyone?

No, and in my view Morrissey is sufficiently entitled to think himself the equal of Kerouac. I'm curious to hear the song. I wonder to what extent he likes the Beats. Come to think of it, there are some superficial parallels between him and Kerouac: both successful athletes in school, both raised Catholic in an ethnic diaspora, both mother's boys, both accused of being right-wing reactionaries in their later years.
 
It's a shame you don't enjoy scholarly analysis, as this book chapter from the Routledge title Adoring Audience (1992) seems pertinent to your situation:

"The literature on fandom is haunted by images of deviance. The fan is consistently characterized (referencing the term's origins) as a potential fanatic. This means that fandom is seen as excessive, bordering on deranged, behaviour. This essay explores how and why the concept of fan involves images of social and psychological pathology."
Yes, brilliant. Where did you get this?
My friend said "Fandom is its own beast. It doesn't matter where and to whom the fans give their attention. The subject of their desires may vary and be various but the fans themselves are a,b,c standard, and uniform "
He did note " although Morrissy does have the honor of having the most deranged fans in the fandom kingdom. This is why solo is the world's first incel site" ( I do steal quite a lot from this guy, I must confess )
 
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