Paperback Edition of 'Morrissey: Pageant of His Bleeding Heart' by Gavin Hopps

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Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart, by Gavin Hopps, came out in paperback a few weeks ago. Great read.


US: http://www.amazon.com/Morrissey-The-Pageant-Bleeding-Heart/dp/1441124047

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Morrissey-The-Pageant-Bleeding-Heart/dp/1441124047/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Europe + (free delivery!) http://www.bookdepository.com/Morrissey-Gavin-Hopps/9781441124043


I think it includes a couple of updates. Scroll down http://www.morrissey-solo.com/threads/101030-Morrissey-The-Pageant-Of-His-Bleeding-Heart/page5 for reviews and more discussion -
 
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I really want to get this book, but the price is taking ages to come down. Even the paperback edition is nearly £30!
 
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Morrissey: The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart, by Gavin Hopps, came out in paperback a few weeks ago. Great read.


US: http://www.amazon.com/Morrissey-The-Pageant-Bleeding-Heart/dp/1441124047

UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Morrissey-The-Pageant-Bleeding-Heart/dp/1441124047/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Europe + (free delivery!) http://www.bookdepository.com/Morrissey-Gavin-Hopps/9781441124043


I think it includes a couple of updates. Scroll down http://www.morrissey-solo.com/threads/101030-Morrissey-The-Pageant-Of-His-Bleeding-Heart/page5 for reviews and more discussion -



Thanks for posting that link to the discussion between Qvist, Worm, yourself and others regarding this book. I think I may have made up my mind to finally buy it.
 
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Thanks for posting that link to the discussion between Qvist, Worm, yourself and others regarding this book. I think I may have made up my mind to finally buy it.

You should. It is unique in the collection of books about Morrissey in that it attempts an analysis of his music strictly on its own merits, trying to figure out how it works, rather than trying to cover the legend and the history surrounding him, as most do. Nobody else has attempted that, as far as I know. (Simon Goddard's book gives accounts of the music and leaves out the media nonsense surrounding it, but his excellent accounts don't delve too deeply into the nuts and bolts of Morrissey's art.)

But be forewarned, there's a lot of hot air, as you can tell from our thread. :rolleyes:
 
I really want to get this book, but the price is taking ages to come down. Even the paperback edition is nearly £30!

Where on earth have you been trying to buy it? I got a paperback for about £8 on Amazon. It's not an easy read, but there's more thought on each page than in the whole of the books by Rogan, Bret, Simpson etc. Simon Reynolds calls it 'the best book on Morrissey I've read' and I agree.
 
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Gave up on page 11. Claiming that 'At last I am born' has the lines 'final hour' and 'soon I will be dead'??? No thanks. Will wait for the autobiography.
 
Where on earth have you been trying to buy it? I got a paperback for about £8 on Amazon. It's not an easy read, but there's more thought on each page than in the whole of the books by Rogan, Bret, Simpson etc. Simon Reynolds calls it 'the best book on Morrissey I've read' and I agree.

Are you talking about Hopps' book or the one I linked to (it's £33 on Amazon!)??
 
Terrible pretentious waffle I made the mistake of buying the hardback its anyones who is prepared to pay the postage but dont say I didnt warn you the price of a stamp is too much!
 
Terrible pretentious waffle I made the mistake of buying the hardback its anyones who is prepared to pay the postage but dont say I didnt warn you the price of a stamp is too much!

This is a perfectly valid reaction to have. If you like theory/pretentious waffle, you're going to like it. If you don't, you're going to hate it. Not a book I would recommend to everybody.
 
Terrible pretentious waffle I made the mistake of buying the hardback its anyones who is prepared to pay the postage but dont say I didnt warn you the price of a stamp is too much!

I just bought the paperback - which is a lovely handsome object, apart from anything else. A more helpful review (of about 4 or 5 pages) is posted on Amazon. Here are some excerpts.


The media will lampoon and the trolls ululate, but Gavin Hopps has sketched the measure of Morrissey better than most in `The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart' (2009). In the comings and goings of Morrissey's world, the author has managed to articulate the `unspeakable', armed with an extensive vocabulary, a love and mastery of his material and a skill for an innovative turn of phrase.

Unawares, a concurrent excavation of Wilde's ideas, which appear regularly throughout, proved for me to be an ideal preparation for reading this book. As a physical object, in its binding and cover design, it is a little work of art, worthy both externally and internally of its subject. Hopps draws from many sources, and essentially, to use a Ken Wilber phrase, `embraces and transcends' all previous speculations on the singer, while adding much rich intelligent commentary. Keep a good dictionary to hand on approaching it!

Here's the keynote theme: "What makes his [Morrissey's] work so extraordinary, though, is the way he seeks out and heroically holds himself in embarrassing situations - suffering as it were sacrificially in front of us on behalf of humanity. `Ecce Homo', his characteristic posture suggests." (p. 5)

Split and multiple selves and voices; the all-inclusive social embrace; the complementary musicality; and many other issues are also comprehensively and aptly explored. Withering comments on the `blokeish' pack who've written about Morrissey before are entertaining, as is his poke at Mark Simpson for surfacing occasionally with a relevant point on the artist when he can distract himself from self-preening! For expert treatment worthy of Morrissey, and a nourishing substantial reading session, let Hopps guide you safely through 'The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart'.
 
I just bought the paperback - which is a lovely handsome object, apart from anything else. A more helpful review (of about 4 or 5 pages) is posted on Amazon. Here are some excerpts.


The media will lampoon and the trolls ululate, but Gavin Hopps has sketched the measure of Morrissey better than most in `The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart' (2009). In the comings and goings of Morrissey's world, the author has managed to articulate the `unspeakable', armed with an extensive vocabulary, a love and mastery of his material and a skill for an innovative turn of phrase.

Unawares, a concurrent excavation of Wilde's ideas, which appear regularly throughout, proved for me to be an ideal preparation for reading this book. As a physical object, in its binding and cover design, it is a little work of art, worthy both externally and internally of its subject. Hopps draws from many sources, and essentially, to use a Ken Wilber phrase, `embraces and transcends' all previous speculations on the singer, while adding much rich intelligent commentary. Keep a good dictionary to hand on approaching it!

Here's the keynote theme: "What makes his [Morrissey's] work so extraordinary, though, is the way he seeks out and heroically holds himself in embarrassing situations - suffering as it were sacrificially in front of us on behalf of humanity. `Ecce Homo', his characteristic posture suggests." (p. 5)

Split and multiple selves and voices; the all-inclusive social embrace; the complementary musicality; and many other issues are also comprehensively and aptly explored. Withering comments on the `blokeish' pack who've written about Morrissey before are entertaining, as is his poke at Mark Simpson for surfacing occasionally with a relevant point on the artist when he can distract himself from self-preening! For expert treatment worthy of Morrissey, and a nourishing substantial reading session, let Hopps guide you safely through 'The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart'.

The quote above couldn't have served as a better reason not to buy this pretentious piece of shite than my simple mind could ever have conjured up minus a dictionary on hand!
 
You should. It is unique in the collection of books about Morrissey in that it attempts an analysis of his music strictly on its own merits, trying to figure out how it works, rather than trying to cover the legend and the history surrounding him, as most do. Nobody else has attempted that, as far as I know. (Simon Goddard's book gives accounts of the music and leaves out the media nonsense surrounding it, but his excellent accounts don't delve too deeply into the nuts and bolts of Morrissey's art.)

But be forewarned, there's a lot of hot air, as you can tell from our thread. :rolleyes:



As long as it isn't "pseudo-intellectual"...
 
As long as it isn't "pseudo-intellectual"...

"There is one very valid test by which we may separate genuine, if perverse and unbalanced, originality and revolt from mere impudent innovation and bluff. The man who really thinks he has an idea will always try to explain that idea. The charlatan who has no idea will always confine himself to explaining that it is much too subtle to be explained. The first idea my really be outree or specialist; it may really be very difficult to express to ordinary people. But because the man is trying to express it, it is most probable that there is something in it, after all. The honest man is he who is always trying to utter the unutterable, to describe the indescribable; but the quack lives not by plunging into mystery, but by refusing to come out of it.

...

If there is a curious and fantastic art, it is the business of the art critics to create a curious and fantastic literary expression for it; inferior to it, doubtless, but still akin to it. If they cannot do this...if there is nothing in their eulogies...then they are quacks or the high-priests of the unutterable. If the art critics can say nothing about the artists except that they are good it is because the artists are bad. They can explain nothing because they have found nothing; and they have found nothing because there is nothing to be found."

G. K. Chesterton, 1912
 
"There is one very valid test by which we may separate genuine, if perverse and unbalanced, originality and revolt from mere impudent innovation and bluff. The man who really thinks he has an idea will always try to explain that idea. The charlatan who has no idea will always confine himself to explaining that it is much too subtle to be explained. The first idea my really be outree or specialist; it may really be very difficult to express to ordinary people. But because the man is trying to express it, it is most probable that there is something in it, after all. The honest man is he who is always trying to utter the unutterable, to describe the indescribable; but the quack lives not by plunging into mystery, but by refusing to come out of it.

...

If there is a curious and fantastic art, it is the business of the art critics to create a curious and fantastic literary expression for it; inferior to it, doubtless, but still akin to it. If they cannot do this...if there is nothing in their eulogies...then they are quacks or the high-priests of the unutterable. If the art critics can say nothing about the artists except that they are good it is because the artists are bad. They can explain nothing because they have found nothing; and they have found nothing because there is nothing to be found."

G. K. Chesterton, 1912



Oddly enough , I was reading a couple of Chesterton's "Father Brown" stories a couple of days ago. Oh hang on , was that pseudo-intellectualising ?:D
 
The quote above couldn't have served as a better reason not to buy this pretentious piece of shite than my simple mind could ever have conjured up minus a dictionary on hand!


Who to trust - author and friend of Moz, Michael Bracewell "Finally Morrissey's astonishing career as a writer and singer is treated with the scholarship it deserves', music critic Simon Reynolds 'Best explication of Morrissey's peculiar genius', or anonymous simple minded troll? That's a tough one ...
 
I must own most of the books written about morrissey or the smiths and have read them all with an open mind yet this book was the only one i didn't finish as it was such a pile of contrived pseudo intellectual waffle it was impossible to read without getting furious at the constant usage of obscure terminology and needlessly complex language, most of which was pointless! Remember the words of the great man were written in the tone of shelagh not some twat with a dictionary and too much time on their paws AVOID THIS 'BOOK' LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!!!!
 
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