Beware the novelist . . . intimate and indiscreet

September 24, 2015 2:22 AM

Morrissey’s debut novel List of the Lost is published today. The author has explained that “The theme is demonology … the left-handed path of black magic. It is about a sports relay team in 1970s America who accidentally kill a wretch who, in esoteric language, might be known as a Fetch … a discarnate entity in physical form.” The initial reviews have not been kind: “an unpolished turd of a book” reckons Michael Hann at The Guardian; “a bizarre misogynistic ramble” opines Nico Hines of The Daily Beast.

Morrissey previously at MeFi.

posted by misteraitch (96 comments total)

That's nothing, you should hear him play piano.
posted by thetortoise at 2:37 AM on September 24, 2015 [39 favorites]

I'm curious to see how it compares to Momus' forays into novel writing (the most recent, Popppappp, having come out a week or two ago), in the sense that both are pop lyricists who have translated their writing to novels. From what I gather, both (advertently or otherwise) break the fourth wall, letting their autobiographical persona emerge in the fiction (Momus has a habit of having various of his characters share his autobiographical details, and Morrissey won't stop banging on about his personal obsessions; i.e., judges, the monarchy, meat and such).

On the other hand, having slogged through the ~50 pages about the court case in Autobiography, and understanding that no publisher dares to impose any editorial restraint on Morrissey, I'm not sure I'm curious enough to actually sit through reading List Of The Lost.
posted by acb at 3:07 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Say what you like about his writing, you cannot help but grudgingly respect the guy for the cover design requirements he apparently manages to get into his contracts.
posted by No-sword at 3:10 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

From the extract I've seen so far, I think we can safely declare the Bad Sex Award winner already, at this early stage.
posted by halcyonday at 3:14 AM on September 24, 2015 [12 favorites]

Sounds like he could win that award for "bulbous salutation" alone.
posted by skybluepink at 3:21 AM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm surprised the username "Bulbous Salutation" hasn't already been registered and appeared in this thread.
posted by No-sword at 3:23 AM on September 24, 2015 [14 favorites]

At this point, I think this was just one thing to cross off his bucket list. The hardcore fans will eat it up and say it's a joke, like everything he does. He'll get to write another one, this time about two traveling vacuum cleaner salesmen in 50s southwest Britain, with half a chapter with them talking about the idiots that don't see the genious of their product.
posted by lmfsilva at 3:31 AM on September 24, 2015

who accidentally kill a wretch who, in esoteric language, might be known as a Fetch

Fetch Lives.
posted by box at 3:38 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

The bulbous salutation excerpt, pasted here for your reading...uh...pleasure?

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 smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza’s body except for the otherwise central zone.

I can't decide what to go for first: the obvious "do a barrel roll" joke, the two characters' matchy names sounding like something from a 2010s hipster Dick and Jane primer, the idea that "bulbous salutation" sounds like a Pokémon move that's Not Very Effective, or the possibility of Eliza having some fucked up HVAC going on. It's like the "how many triangles are in this picture" of bad sex writing.
posted by Metroid Baby at 3:39 AM on September 24, 2015 [75 favorites]

It's a bit like that “sex scenes written by an alien trying to pretend it doesn't find humans disgusting” page that was floating around some time ago.
posted by acb at 3:46 AM on September 24, 2015 [36 favorites]

So you could say that Morrissey forgot the Polish?
posted by srboisvert at 3:53 AM on September 24, 2015

I assume one of them gets hit by a folding chair as they climax.
posted by nom de poop at 4:12 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Ah, Morrissey. Forever a brave voyager into new lands of bell-endery.
posted by sobarel at 4:15 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Stop trying to make 'fetch' happen.
posted by sexyrobot at 4:28 AM on September 24, 2015 [24 favorites]

Eh, I've been embarrassed for him for the past couple of decades, one more won't hurt.
posted by Optamystic at 4:35 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

Dave Gorman's take.
posted by Wordshore at 4:59 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

"Bulbous salutations are greetings, it's my fancy way of saying hello."
posted by lagomorphius at 5:11 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Am now imagining that "Bulbous salutations!" is how posh students in an Oxbridge university society greet each other, shortly before [redated] a pig's head.
posted by Wordshore at 5:16 AM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

morrissey, honey, no

just shhhhh
posted by palomar at 5:20 AM on September 24, 2015 [35 favorites]

Wait, what does it mean that the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation is 'extenuating his excitement'? That the frenzy makes him less excited or the excitement more bearable? Or that Moz doesn't know what 'extenuate' means?

Because if he'd got that one word right the rest of the passage would be totally A-OK, I'm sure.
posted by Mocata at 5:29 AM on September 24, 2015 [9 favorites]

Wow, that sex scene is bad. Really, really bad. I've never been a fan of his music, but I would have assumed that someone with that many years of songwriting experience would have more command and control of language and imagery. Apparently not.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:35 AM on September 24, 2015

The Smiths are my favorite band, but I feel no need to read Morrissey's prose.
posted by 4ster at 5:47 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

*loads flamethrower*
posted by jonmc at 5:50 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, you have to understand that his best songwriting years are far behind him, for starters. I think you could make a pretty good case for "Piccadilly Polare"-era Morrissey, but after that there's just not much - and that's early nineties.

The thing about the Smiths - there's a lot of stuff that's sorta-misogynist in their lyrics, the kind of thing where if Morrissey hadn't turned into an openly awful person you'd just write it off as youth and closetedness but that, as it turns out, predicts so much. And then the minute he's working on solo stuff, he starts to get racist.

It's a shame, because the Smiths were, for the most part, great. And Derek Jarman directed three of their videos. Ask in particular is really lovely. (And the reading changes totally if you assume that the boy in the specs is gay, of course.)
posted by Frowner at 5:52 AM on September 24, 2015 [11 favorites]

Temper this crictical lust, at least, lest this be the last "List of the Lost" loosed from his pen.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:59 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

The video's good and all but the studio version of Ask is so-so compared to the live version on Rank, which is a thing to be treasured until the end of human history.
posted by Mocata at 6:00 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

Or that Moz doesn't know what 'extenuate' means?

I've read it a few times and there's no way for it to make sense in the syntax used. Also, 'otherwise central zone'. What? Doesn't the use of 'otherwise' necessitate another body part? Is he referring to her breasts in Act 3 of that sentence, a thousand words earlier? Does it also imply that she doesn't have a brain?
posted by jimmythefish at 6:02 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I feel so much less vain and foolish for writing and hawking my own novel now. Thanks Moz!
posted by saulgoodman at 6:07 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've read it a few times and there's no way for it to make sense in the syntax used.

I am beginning to suspect that that passage is not, in fact, a description of a sexual act, but an elliptical and cunning denouncement of early 21st C UK transit infrastructure.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:09 AM on September 24, 2015 [28 favorites]

GenjiandProust, I agree. I myself have not even tried to visit the Central Zone since all the construction that went on during the Olympics.
posted by Devoidoid at 6:12 AM on September 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

My biggest disappointment here is the absence of Sleestaks.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:20 AM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Are you sure that excerpt isn't a misplaced entry for the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest?
posted by ElleElle at 6:22 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

That's what sex with Mozzy is like, though.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 6:39 AM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Good Lord, that sex scene excerpt reads like a parody of terrible sex scene writing. Smothered in adjectives and adverbs; odd and mismatched metaphors; a thesaurus' worth of synonyms for the verb "to exclaim". I can almost believe that it is a joke.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:42 AM on September 24, 2015

Why does this guy have traction?
posted by Bovine Love at 6:45 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Why does this guy have traction?

Middle-aged people with disposable income and a sense of melancholy about their youth.
posted by acb at 6:48 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Why does this guy have traction?

The Smiths were entertaining as hell. As for the rest, I'm going to have to say, "What Frowner said".
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 6:52 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

All I can think of is one of those Andy Capp panels of domestic violence, except instead of fists and feet and heads the dust cloud has boobs and teeth and a bulbous salutation.
posted by Existential Dread at 6:53 AM on September 24, 2015 [16 favorites]

Some tweeting-through of the book from earlier today here.
posted by robself at 6:57 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's a bit like that "sex scenes written by an alien trying to pretend it doesn't find humans disgusting" page that was floating around some time ago.

Ah, yes. The Erotica Written By An Alien Pretending Not To Be Horrified By The Human Body series: parts one, two, and three.

"They put their mouths upon, but did not consume, one another's flimsiest parts, as if they had forgotten what the process of eating looked like, and could only remember the very beginning of the act."
posted by divined by radio at 6:58 AM on September 24, 2015 [28 favorites]

"Fast and bulbous!
That's right, The Mascara Snake. Also, a tin teardrop."
- Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica

I can't hear the word 'bulbous' without this whole exchange running through my head.
posted by rock swoon has no past at 7:01 AM on September 24, 2015 [12 favorites]

rock swoon has no past: "Bulbous, also tapered!"

(I came in here to post that exchange, too. Damn you, Don Van Vliet!)
posted by SansPoint at 7:03 AM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

morrissey what is happen
posted by Kitteh at 7:09 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

Say what you like about his writing, you cannot help but grudgingly respect the guy for the cover design requirements he apparently manages to get into his contracts.


Yeah, but that's not how I judge the novel, though.
posted by The River Ivel at 7:13 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

We're all better off reading a book about a boy who loves Morrissey, "The Wrong Boy" by Willy Russell, than a book by Morrissey about the wrongness of a willy and its bulbous salutation.
posted by h00py at 7:41 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

“Bulbous salutation”: with these two words, Morrissey has irrevocably undone all of the charm his lyrics have conjured. Think of all those Smiths lyris—say, for example, “so you go and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home, and you cry and you want to die”—which so appositely conjured the anguish and melancholy that is part of the human condition. They are now all but destroyed by the knowledge that the author of them used the words “bulbous salutation” in a cringeworthily cack-handed sex scene.

The phrase “bulbous salutation” may well end up becoming to Morrissey what pigs are to David Cameron: something which sticks indelibly to him and renders him ridiculous, like an indelible clown nose.
posted by acb at 7:52 AM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Morrissey is the Amanda McKittrick Ros of our generation.

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?
posted by RokkitNite at 8:07 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

acb He also wrote "Some girls are bigger than others / Some girls are bigger than others / Some girl's mothers are bigger than / Other girl's mothers", which is an accurate statement, but not exactly the greatest thing ever put to song.
posted by SansPoint at 8:11 AM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

Bulbous Salutations!

I am Prince Steven Patrick Morrissey, and I have learned that you are a trustworthy person. I have $3,134,1990's worth of ego illegally impounded by JUDGES and MONARCHS and CRITICS and I need to transfer it.

If you send me £14.99 I will send you ALL MY EGO in the form of a book.

I know you will help me, and then I will help you.

Blessings be upon you

Prince Steven Patrick Morrissey, Emperor of the Eighties, Sultan of Sadness and LOOK AT ME, I'M HIDING.
posted by Devonian at 8:16 AM on September 24, 2015 [51 favorites]

Why does this guy have traction?

Good pavement design and proper road drainage
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:24 AM on September 24, 2015 [14 favorites]

I sometimes wonder why I never liked The Smiths when so many others do but then I realize I was already 19 by the time they came out and was past my brooding and bemused teen phase.
So I've never really understood why Morrissey commands so much attention every time he spouts an opinion or delivers an unpolished turd.
posted by rocket88 at 8:25 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I sometimes wonder why I never liked The Smiths when so many others do but then I realize I was already 19 by the time they came out and was past my brooding and bemused teen phase.

That would make us about the same age, so that explains it for me as well, although somehow I heard about them without hearing them during the eighties--I think I became more aware of Morrissey personally when he became sort of a punchline, e.g. one of Henry Rollins' spoken word routines has a bit about shitty English weather and its impact on his mood: "Now I understand how Morrissey happens." The only song I like of his, "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday", I like only because Bowie covers it on Black Tie White Noise, and I vastly prefer the cover to the original.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:33 AM on September 24, 2015

Why does this guy have traction?

Most likely because the Smiths were so distinct and as an unfortnate result, a cult of Morrisey resulted.

But particular guys having traction is an unfortunate reality of human existence it seems. See also, in music, Nickelback. See also in politics, almost all of them, but particularly obviously, the current GOP list of candidates and their related bloggers, Fox News, and crazy supporters country wide. In television we have the new Doctor Who. In movies we ... well, the list would be endless really.

From the extract I've seen so far, I think we can safely declare the Bad Sex Award winner already, at this early stage.

Dennis Potter wrote sex way better (though of course in the context of the Singing Detective, with more than a little bitterness):

Mouth sucking wet and slack at mouth, tongue chafing against tongue, limb thrusting upon limb, skin rubbing at skin. Faces contort and stretch into a helpless leer, organs spurt out smelly stains and sticky betrayals. This is the sweaty farce out of which we are brought into being. We are implicated without choice in the slippery catastrophe of the copulations which spatter us into existence.
posted by juiceCake at 8:35 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

I grew up with the understanding that Morrissey was an unbearable fucking mope who hated sex and meat.

There is a perverse part of me wondering if he wrote a scene about eating a cheeseburger, and how unbearable the description must be, how unlike anything I've ever experienced in the real world.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 8:40 AM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

It's at times like these that I like to reread Morrissey's trash review of the Ramones, and shake my head with a loving smile. Never change, Moz. Never change.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:44 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

It doesn't sound that bad, tbh. It sounds remarkably like what you'd get if Morrissey wrote a book. Like if someone extruded J.D. Salinger through William Burroughs through a middle-aged singer from Manchester living in Los Angeles with a shtick of florid melancholy. It seems the reviewers' main complaint, above all else (regardless of how many truckloads of 'else' there may be), is who wrote it. That's kind of shitty.

One thing that strikes me about these reviews (and many reviews of Morrissey's music, for that matter) is that they don't seem to even try to distinguish between the author and his fictional characters. (I'm not saying it would be an easy feat, particularly if it's as homogeneous as they make it out, but they could at least try.) They're all like, "Jeez, these college students sound like a bunch of sophomoric windbags! Morrissey, amirite?" And, well, "no shit" on the first charge, and "show your work" on the second. Maybe they're supposed to be like that? Maybe that's the sort of people the story's about? Maybe that's the point?
posted by Sys Rq at 8:51 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Beware the novelist . . . intimate and indiscreet

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
posted by Splunge at 8:57 AM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

"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."

Fame, fame, fatal fame, it can play hideous tricks on the brain ......
posted by blucevalo at 8:59 AM on September 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

Top Ten Potential MetaFilter Usernames Taken From Morressey's First Literary Sex Scene:

1. one giggling snowball
2. full-figured copulation
3. dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster
4. sexually violent rotation
5. Eliza’s breasts
6. Ezra’s howling mouth
7. the pained frenzy
8. bulbous salutation
9. barrel-rolled
10. the otherwise central zone
posted by vibrotronica at 9:11 AM on September 24, 2015 [17 favorites]

Top Ten Potential MetaFilter Usernames Taken From Morressey's First Literary Sex Scene:
...
posted by vibrotronica at 5:11 PM on September 24

Eponysterical
posted by Wordshore at 9:21 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

/me pats poor Morrissey on the head.

"Now Now baby, let's put a bandaid on that ego burn and get you in the bath..."
posted by Annika Cicada at 9:21 AM on September 24, 2015

The phrase "barrel-rolled" gives me the unshakeable mental image of them actually revolving as a pair, like some kind of propeller with the axle at her sternum.
posted by wanderingmind at 9:33 AM on September 24, 2015

The bulbous salutation excerpt, pasted here for your reading...uh...pleasure?

Morty *burp* Morty check it out the Cronenbergs are mating
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:41 AM on September 24, 2015 [14 favorites]

I can only tolerate Morrissey as filtered through comedian Dana Gould: "Clown Fucker"
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:49 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn" / And you claim these words as your own

I'm never going to be able to hear the lyrics above sung again now, without picturing a "bulbous salutation to the dawn" with all that implies.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:55 AM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

Also, 'otherwise central zone'. What?

it is between her eastern zone and her mountain zone
posted by poffin boffin at 9:58 AM on September 24, 2015 [10 favorites]

Wait a second

Is it possible Mozzy has literally never had sex? Like at all with anyone?
posted by The Whelk at 10:03 AM on September 24, 2015 [19 favorites]

It says a lot about Morrissey that I was a huge, tour-following fan ten years ago, and all I feel now is mild schadenfreude. There's a lot of bad behavior and a lot of awful writing between those two points.
posted by thesmallmachine at 10:03 AM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I wrote songs pretty well in the Thatcher years,
But heaven knows I'm terrible now.
posted by Naberius at 10:06 AM on September 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

"Even the Cartwright brothers in the classic TV Western Bonanza are said to 'possess a natural virility and capable masculinity.'"

So, no Sleestaks but a couple of Cartwrights. Steven Patrick Morrissey, my rage is abated and I am well-contented. Now turn your hand to Bonanza slash. I reckon you've got what it takes.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:08 AM on September 24, 2015

It's probably not worse than Nick Cave's novel.
posted by colie at 10:15 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's one of those books that point out the need for an MST3K ebook reader with clickable footnotes by Crow and Tom Servo.
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:25 AM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

and conveniently not eight zillion pages long like the insufferable faulkner fan fiction grand guignol of cave's first novel
posted by Morvran Avagddu at 10:27 AM on September 24, 2015

colie It's probably not worse than Nick Cave's novel.

Yeah, but when Elvis Costello puts out his version of Nick Cave's novel, it'll probably sell better.
posted by SansPoint at 10:28 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

"His Bulbous Salutation" is the Phillip Pullman book you didn't know you wanted until now.
posted by Errant at 10:58 AM on September 24, 2015 [9 favorites]

'Cellar door', step aside. 'Bulbous salutation' is now the most beautiful phrase in the English language.
posted by Fig at 11:28 AM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

Fortunately, the author saves an otherwise central disastrous sex scene by adding the word "sexually".
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 11:30 AM on September 24, 2015

MetaFilter: Boobs and teeth and a bulbous salutation.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 11:30 AM on September 24, 2015

bulbous bouffant (blubber) macadamia (blubber) gazebo...
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:56 AM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

bulbous salutation to the dawn

I wake up most mornings with one of these. It tends to go away on its own.
posted by dis_integration at 12:03 PM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

oneswellfoop: the need for an MST3K ebook reader
All right, who let Moz out of the Tupperware?
posted by mon-ma-tron at 12:15 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was a massive breathless fan 25 years ago and like everyone else am saddened and amused by this nonsense book. I also look back at Moz's 'racial politics interventions' with growing disgust.

But I do feel there's at least some kind of novelty and freshness in his insistence on growing old awfully. His health is atrocious as far as anyone knows, and he'll likely be dead within 5-10 years. At least he's not fully establishment like Elton John, who used to be a really inventive musician before he just decided to hang out with royalty and fashion people etc. He's never really been a musician and now he's not a novelist.
posted by colie at 12:30 PM on September 24, 2015

He's never really been a musician and now he's not a novelist.

I can't wait to see what he won't be next!
posted by I_Zimbra at 1:04 PM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

I_Zimbra Anybody's hero?
posted by SansPoint at 1:27 PM on September 24, 2015

I strongly recommend cultivating a love of the Smiths to every young person starting out in life; nothing else will teach you quite so quickly what a gulf there can be between what you love and the people who made it.
posted by Zeinab Badawi's Twenty Hotels at 3:06 PM on September 24, 2015 [13 favorites]

I've had "Girlfriend is a Demon" running through my head ever since I read about this this morning.
posted by Cocodrillo at 5:17 PM on September 24, 2015

Wait a second

Is it possible Mozzy has literally never had sex? Like at all with anyone?
posted by The Whelk at 1:03 PM on September 24 [11 favorites +] [!]

Like a bag of sand?
posted by 4ster at 6:21 PM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

There should be a trainwreck rule, where when a celebrity (through illness, drug addiction, aging, whatever) reaches a certain level of sadness in their fall from grace we all basically agree to ignore the embarrassing things they're doing and we just hope that eventually they'll find their way out of it. No endless schadenfreude. No huffy outrage about whatever latest stupid, ugly things they've said and done. Just an awkward silence, an unspoken acknowledgement that this once-celebrated person seems to be going through a very difficult, self-destructive time, then we move on.

We could call it the Busey Law. That'd work.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 7:10 PM on September 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

If you never ever thought Morrissey or the Smiths were good, I don't even know what to tell you. Sorry?
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:31 PM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Ursula Hitler: "If you never ever thought Morrissey or the Smiths were good, I don't even know what to tell you. Sorry?"

"The sun shines out of your behind"?
posted by chavenet at 1:45 AM on September 25, 2015

Oh, poor Moz. He's becoming like the tweedy old man at the library who'll go on for ages about his grievances against the Post Office. You can tell he's intelligent and well-read, but he's sunk under weird, irrelevant obsessions.

Not really that surprised about the crypto-mysogyny, though. Have you heard the Morrissey? Unless a woman is a sad martyr, she's a grasping, sex-crazed airhead. In the autobiography, I think the only woman he describes positively throughout is Kristy MacColl, and I suspect that's because she died before she could do him some perceived slight. When he describes women in general, he writes some awful stuff.

I'm just going to pretend this doesn't exist and listen to "Still Ill" again.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 7:01 AM on September 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

I read a smidge more of Autobiography (what I purchased for my partner, and you do not want to see how much dust it is now under) than I did The DaVinci Code or Twilight.

I can't say what was worse, but I can honestly say I grew to dislike Moz in those two pages.

I thought it was common knowledge that Nick Cave didn't actually write And the Ass Saw the Angel but just slapped his name on a thesaurus and had it published.

I enjoyed the half of And the Ass Saw the Angel I read. I've never heard a good word about Bunny Monroe.
posted by Mezentian at 9:50 AM on September 25, 2015

Bunny Munro was Cave channeling Palahniuk and not very well. And I say this as someone who loves Nick Cave.
posted by Kitteh at 10:01 AM on September 25, 2015

The Proposition was pretty good, though. Still, I can't imagine Nick Cave insisting that his novels be published as Penguin classics.
posted by thetortoise at 2:56 PM on September 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wait, NO ONE in this thread made a, "the more you ignore him, the closer he gets" joke?
posted by Chrysostom at 4:01 PM on September 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

"I've seen this happen to other people's books. Now it's happening to mine."
posted by 4ster at 5:24 PM on September 25, 2015 [2 favorites]