Odd This Day

It is, today, not the 13th anniversary of the publication of Steven Morrissey’s autobiography (it had been out for ten days) but something much better: the 13th anniversary of the Sunday Times publishing A. A. Gill’s merciless mauling of it—a review which went on to win Hatchet Job of the Year

Just been reminded that Michael Deacon in the Telegraph did a top ten most embarrassing lines from Morrissey’s ‘novel’, List of the Lost, which includes “‘I have erotic curiosities,’ topspins Ezra.” and...

balls.ieA Necessary Review Of Morrissey's Mind-Bendingly Bad Novel, List Of The Lost | Balls.ieMorrissey Novel - Morrissey -that one- wrote an abysmal novel entitled List of the Lost in 2015, and it got The Reducer treatment this week.

Wonderful: “this novel is so cosmically off-putting and pretentious that even my fifteen-year-old self would have balked at its contents”

The Author, Séamas O'Reilly@seamas.bsky.social

Penguin released not one, but *two* books by Morrissey in their Classics line. One was the memoir excoriated by AA Gill, but the other was his novel List Of The Lost, which was much, much worse. 11 years ago this week, I read it so you don't have to. www.balls.ie/the-rewind/m...

sciencealert.comFirst Evidence of Sleep Rebound Discovered in an InvertebrateTucked in a corner of an enclosure, swaddled in darkness, a tiny spider sleeps.

Fascinating, although some of you may not want to look at it: spiders twitch in their sleep

Further footnote: my feelings about Will Self are about as mixed as those for A. A. Gill, but this is a joy

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archive.clivejames.comBooks: From the Land of Shadows : A Blizzard of Tiny Kisses | clivejames.com

“As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks” Saving this for later. I suggest you do the same (if you can restrain yourself now)

MeredyddB@meredyddb.bsky.social

This review is a beauty. archive.clivejames.com/books/tiny-k...

theguardian.comObserver review: The Book of Kings by James ThackaraSadly James Thackara's is terrible. Philip Hensher despairs of The Book of Kings

...and the one that starts “Reviewing someone’s first novel, it is customary to be polite about it, to find things to praise in it. So let me say straight away that James Thackara’s The Book Of Kings is printed on very nice paper...” and I implore you to read it all—especially the last line

Good footnote!

Mark@worgztheowl.bsky.social

Having flicked through it when staying round a friend's the Morrissey autobiography is genuinely hilarious, because it does read to the word like a Craig Brown parody of what Morrissey would write.

Anyway, if you like a review which brings the knives out...

David Benedict@eggsbened.bsky.social

theguardian.com2121: A Tale from the Next Century by Susan Greenfield – reviewWill ‘Internet Addiction Disorder’ be the downfall of humanity? Neuroscientist Greenfield’s foray into science fiction produces sentences that simply boggle the mind, writes Adam Roberts

There’s also...

...the risible way in which he writes about sex...

...and finishes with a flourish of... well, let’s call it psychoanalysis, shall we?

He takes Gill to task for his monomania...

...his poor characterisation and apparent homophobia...

In the interests of balance, the now defunct website of The Omnivore (which gave out the hatchet job award) said that “In his acceptance speech ... AA Gill fondly reminisced about the mauling his first novel, Sap Rising, had received at the hands of the critics”—one of whom was Nicholas Lezard

I discovered the Omnivore website was dead yesterday, so I’m very relieved I once copied and pasted the text of the review. Lezard apparently once said “I must say it rather set the standard for hatchet jobs at the time”, and you may not think that sounds modest, but he had a point...

Gill isn’t kind for long, though: “The hurt recrimination is sometimes risible but mostly dull, like listening to neighbours bicker through a partition wall, and occasionally startlingly unpleasant, such as the reference to the Moors murderers and the unfound grave of their victim Keith Bennett.”

...and the final paragraph definitely wields a blade of some kind: “There are many pop autobiographies that shouldn’t be written. Some to protect the unwary reader, and some to protect the author. In Morrissey’s case, he has managed both.”

His account of growing up and going to school in Manchester is “laughably overwrought and overwritten, a litany of retrospective hurt and score-settling that reads like a cross between Madonna and Catherine Cookson”

I’m not sure it really is a hatchet job, though, because Gill calls this passage where Morrissey sings for the first time “revelatory and touching”—when, to me, it sounds like someone who thinks they’re a writer but has somehow never heard of understatement

independent.co.ukSmiths bidding war hinges on 'classic' statusPublishers battle to bag Morrissey memoir

“We feel very strongly that you belong in this company. You deserve Faber and the love we can give you. History demands it; destiny commands it.” Yes, it seems almost no one in publishing came out of this with their dignity intact

(My favourite bit of that article, though, is Johnny Marr declaring that he, too, has been “offered a book deal, a serious one ... It will be an autobiography, of course – that or my collection of fascinating public bus tickets from the ’80s.”) Anyway, back to Gill, who says:

A. A. Gill was something of a polarising figure himself, but: damn, he could write: “He tells us he ditched “Steve”, his given name, to be known by his portentous unimoniker because — deep reverential breath here — great classical composers only have one name. Mussorgsky, Mozart, Morrissey.”

His memoir being deemed a Penguin Classic on first publication would be one of the more ludicrous facts surrounding the work, were it not for the fact that “The publishing director of Faber and Faber sent the singer an open letter begging him to join the ‘house of Eliot’.”, and continued...

20h

This was published in the Beaumont Journal (Texas) on 27 October 1978, reporting on an incident which had taken place the day before, so happy impolite cat causes death day to all who celebrate

newspapers.comscorecard (!)Clipping found in Beaumont Journal published in Beaumont, Texas on 10/27/1978. scorecard (!)

20h

Via:

23h

I don’t have a new anniversary for today, so happy 11th birthday to the comprehensive history of the adjustable spanner

Odd This Day@oddthisday.bsky.social

So, happy 10th anniversary of the publication of this book

23h

I suppose that should have read ‘it is inconceivable that there could ever be a finer anniversary than this one and also I can’t be arsed to repost the whole thread’

22h

Excellent footnote!

Al Kennedy@alkennedy.bsky.social

As Chris points out, this is the work of the composer/musician Ron Geesin, and you can see Ron's son, Gary Lactus aka @frasergeesin.bsky.social, on stage arsing about with me and @danwhite.bsky.social in Harrogate at 1.45pm on 14 November at @thoughtbubbleuk.bsky.social for SILENCE! To Astonish 2026

telegraph.co.ukLiz Truss’s new book is the most deranged thing I’ve ever readLike an alcoholic who cannot admit they have a drinking problem, the former PM is convinced that everyone else is to blame for her failures

“Of all the books I have ever reviewed that purported to offer a serious thesis, this is without question the most deranged.“ A joyful read

Andy Brockman@andybrockman.bsky.social

Simon Heffer's review of "Bank Job" by Liz Truss is up there with Sir Richard Evans review of Boris Johnson's Churchill biography. "If you are seeking a Christmas present for someone you really don’t like, give them a copy." (If I get a copy of this in Secret Santa someone is in serious trouble.)

Also, anyone got a decent rhyme for ‘orgy’…?

Winner, surely?

Jamie Douglass@jamesldouglass.bsky.social

"Roses are red, Most phones are still 4G"?

Odd This Day reposted

Dave Whamond

@davewhamond.bsky.social

This was my breakfast reading/viewing. Highly recommended. Awake at 5, and I feel at least slightly braced now

Lev Parikian@levparikian.bsky.social

I‘m on my nonsense again. This week’s Six Things: – Local Wiki – Not Kevin Bacon – Fiction Maps – Gorey envelope art – how to make a shuttlecock – Border Chain geography game

Odd This Day reposted

So, unhappy 106th anniversary, Alexander, King of Greece, dead at just 27 on this day in 1920 from a macaque bite that went septic, leading—what with one thing and another—to a *lot* of other deaths, the birth of modern Turkey, and Prince Philip marrying the woman who would be Queen Elizabeth II...

It’s 175 years since the London John Bull said of Moby Dick: “Who would have looked for philosophy in whales, or for poetry in blubber. Yet few books which professedly deal in metaphysics, or claim the parentage of the muses, contain as much true philosophy and as much genuine poetry...”