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.)

 

[Dirk Blaggard]

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.

M is a huge beat fan or was. The beat movement was big to some of us brits. Especially of his age group but even down to mine.
The clothing was of a type we liked and so was their popularisation of the French existentialist movement
In fact, much of his Smith's look was like an English college take on the James Dean beat look .
This can be seen with other artists like Lloyd Cole also
America was vert important to some of us Brits

 

[Gregor Samsa]

M is a huge beat fan or was. The beat movement was big to some of us brits. Especially of his age group but even down to mine.
The clothing was of a type we liked and so was their popularisation of the French existentialist movement
In fact, much of his Smith's look was like an English college take on the James Dean beat look .
This can be seen with other artists like Lloyd Cole also
America was vert important to some of us Brits

Not many people would refer to James Dean’s look (or anything concerning Dean) as ‘beat’. Nor would many refer to Morrissey’s look in the Smiths as ‘college’. Perhaps college students got inspired by Moz’ look, but it was hardly the other way around.