(Posted by Ben)
(If you’re wondering what this is all about, click here.)
The third member of my Guest Blogging Dream Team is the first not to be a writer in the most commonly understood sense of the term, but he is often mentioned in the same breath as poets of considerable literary repute.
He takes D H Lawrence’s occasionally misanthropic outlook on life to the extreme, and shares the novelist’s bluntness and willingness to sound off, as well as his habit of not suffering fools gladly.
At the same time, like Alan Bennett, his concern with England and the eccentricities of the English is bordering on the obsessive, though, unlike Bennett, he has attracted a good deal of criticism for the views he’s expressed on the subject.
Yes, of course, love him or hate him, it’s the living legend that is Morrissey.
Perhaps at his best when sparring with journalists during interviews, he would nevertheless no doubt relish the opportunity to foist his opinions on others free from the constraints and the misrepresentational meddling of the media.
Morrissey’s back catalogue, as a solo artist but especially as frontman for The Smiths, bears witness to his talents as an intelligent and provocative lyricist. In particular, his fondness for existential reflection and his ability to write introspectively about his own intensely personal feelings in such a way that others can identify with – essentially, the ability to make himself an interesting subject – make him eminently suitable for blogging.
This isn’t to suggest that I think he’s a likeable person, or even necessarily sympathetic – but then that needn’t detract from the quality of what he might be expected to write and post. Indeed, what makes him such an entertaining lyricist and interviewee is the way he manages to dress witheringly cynical comments and spitefully barbed put-downs in such verbal finery and succinct epigrammatic wit. His seemingly eternal quotability would make him quite an asset.
The Guest Blogging Dream Team so far: D H Lawrence, Alan Bennett and Morrissey.
Member #4 to be unveiled tomorrow.
troubled diva 