Autobiography by Morrissey

(Putnam, $30)

“At first glance, Autobiography is a welcome addition to the rock memoir canon,” said Andrew Marzoni in The New York Observer. Morrissey, the former lead singer of the Smiths, starts his magisterially titled first book with an account of his youth in Manchester, England, that’s “pure Dickensian genius.” Morrissey’s songs have always attracted the theatrically aggrieved, and his biting, hyperbolic descriptions of growing up working-class and Roman Catholic in a postindustrial wasteland are “as sad and beautiful” as anything he ever committed to multitrack tape during his band’s 1980s heyday. “But misery doesn’t age well,” and the 54-year-old born Steven Patrick Morrissey remains full of complaints.

“If you were expecting a warm, cuddly Morrissey,” you’re probably not a true fan, said Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone. Autobiography is “petty bile raised to the level of madcap rapture,” and the only surprise about it is the consistent high quality of its dark humor. “Practically every paragraph has a line or two that demands to be read aloud” or “carved on tombstones.” He acknowledges his egocentricity from the start, said Terry Eagleton in The Guardian (U.K.). “My birth almost kills my mother,” he writes, “for my head is too big.” That’s clever stuff. In fact, “if he could get treatment for his addiction to alliteration,” this “prodigiously talented” misanthrope could one day even write a book worthy of the Booker Prize.

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But what a wasted opportunity this first book is, said Chris Heath in GQ. I began reading Autobiography excited about learning from Morrissey himself what inspired the songs that served as “lighthouse flashes” to my angst-ridden teenage self. But the singer rarely lets up from his gripes and score-settling to enlighten us. When he does focus on things he cares about, like the chart performance of his records or the royalty share he thinks he deserves, the result is far from flattering. The tragedy here is he complains so endlessly about those who failed to respect his greatness, “he somehow fails to linger on it himself.”