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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

“Um, Nighthawk? Planet Earth, calling. You said you were reading this way back on October 23, 2015. Exactly 4 months have passed. Leaves and snow have fallen. ’15 became ’16. The Grammys finished making their own, annual, “List of the Lost.” So…

How the heck is it?”

I thought you’d never ask. ; )

It’s a powerful, thought provoking, sad comment on human nature and parts of American society’s basest motivations that interestingly takes place in this country at a time when its author was yet to live here ¹. It’s a work that will linger in the mind for both its messages and its craft. Along the way, many of the author’s long held core beliefs find their way into the narrative, along with a range of others. As an admitted Morrissey “fan” it’s not appropriate for me to “review” List, because of course, I’m going to say “It’s great! Read it!,” but it’s not that simple. Unlike Autobiography, which I think is 1/2 of a classic and I hope for an update one day, List is a novel, a dark one, that takes place in a land where the sun never shines and where the untoward lurks around every corner, every moment. In the place of “review,” then, some observations. For those planning on reading it (as I write this it still hasn’t been published in the USA, but very reasonably priced copies are available online. Mine was less than 10. including shipping.) don’t worry, I will not “spoil the plot,” or give too much away. (As always, I have read nothing anyone has written about it, save for Morrissey’s quote on the back cover, )

I have been aware of Morrissey, listening to his music, going to see him and The Smiths (in 1986), and following his career since “The Smiths” (their debut Lp) came out in 1984. Some of my Posts here use his songs as their soundtracks. Almost 32 years on it’s IMPOSSIBLE for me to read something like this and not find my mind constantly being pulled in a hundred directions with every line, like following a decades long trail of bread crumbs. This is one reason I prefer movies with actors I don’t know (as when I first saw “2001”). Not knowing anything “about” them helps me believe their character more – there is none of their personal gossip and real life lore to get in the way. Reading List, it’s too hard for me to not bring any other point of reference to bear And? There are many- take 2013’s Autobiography. In it we learned (sorry for the spoiler, but you’ve had two years to read it) that young Morrissey was a runner, and one who did well at it. By chance, the 4 heroes of List are runners, a half mile relay team. Along with one of their girlfriends and the team’s coach they are most of the major players. In 1975 when the story takes place, they are 20, Morrissey was 16. So, is it fair to wonder why early on the author can go into such detail about the experience of running? The purpose of the runner? His feelings during training or of winning or losing? The depth with which he writes about their activity is knowing and considered. It’s obvious (or it sure feels that way) that he’s lived it. Been there and done that. So, Morrissey was a runner and has now written a novel about runners. A novel about 4 runners, a relay team, is very unusual if not unique.

And it’s in “coincidences” like this where my “troubles” began.

Morrissey’s Autobiography clocks in at 480 pages in paperback. HIs first novel, List of the Lost, totals a mere 118 pages. List took me longer to read. I started reading it 3 times. The first to get an idea of it, like I’ll take a quick walkthrough of a major Art show I’m seeing for the first time, to get a feel for how to approach it. The restart was “Ok, let’s just read it.” Once I realized how very much Morrissey has packed into the very economical 118 pages, I realized it was too hard for me to read it in a vacuum (which won’t be a problem for most readers). I started athird, taking notes and making an outline. 28 pages of notes later, I finished reading List last night.

Readers Meet Author…”With The Hope Of Hearing Sense.”* Count Basie Theater, NJ Jan 15, 2013

As someone who grew up in America, 3,500 odd miles from where M grew up, though not all that many years apart, I find his observations on American family life fascinating. He does say in Autobiography that he visited the USA with his family as a kid. I grew up in one of those repressed households he describes early on, and seeing it through his eyes was a revelation- for me, about my own life-

“Sex was always there…yet… difficult to obtain…because of the atomic supremacy in the family values of their upbringings which, of course, circumscribed the sons’ freedom to fly, since a certain sexlessness kept the grown child tied to the family, even if the impossibly constricted demands could very easily lead to a form of sexual cremation for the young child. The parental mind would allow the child time to develop political views, but there would certainly be no question of allowing the child time to choose its preferred religion, and even more importantly, the grand assumption that all children are extensively heterosexually resolved at birth whipped a demented torment across the many who were not. Whether physical maneuvers were difficlut or easy (and it is usually one or the other, and for eternity), our foursome found in each other a generosity of spirit and determination that all other circumstances seemed blind to. Each would make up for the other’s loss- so firmly they took their friendship into their own hands, and around it went.” List of the Lost, Pages 11-12.

As you can see, he immediately folds this observation seamlessly into setting the stage for the characters in his book. Following this “crumb”, I began to notice snippets of more opinions and observations, at first gradually, then more at length, that are nothing less than commentary on society and a range of many other topics. They are generally well placed as context, but they did tend to “jar” me out of the story to ponder a bigger picture. As I read the book, I was fascinated by what the writer chooses to include, and leave out (see ^ below). This is largely accomplished through the voice I call the Narrator (N). Exactly who he is is never revealed. Yet, his views are remarkably similar to the author’s. (“Narrator Meet Author”?) He is the “other” major character in List.

The N provided a steady stream of interest for me, delaying my completion date at every page turn, and he pontificates for pages at a time in a 118 page book. Animal nature, animal rights and lack thereof, human nature, the differences between animals and humans, sex, hookups, middle aged men, old men, old women, Churchill, Princess-later-Queen Elizabeth, royals in general, nuclear engineers, the police, war and war dead, the asexuality of friendships, who really won WW2, sports as “news,” justice & the courts, meat overeating Americans and their children (a laundry “list” of M’s hot button issues if there ever was one), are some of the topics our N addresses at length, while key moments of plot happen in a flash. Other topics, yes including homosexuality are occasionally discussed at length by the characters, but mostly it’s left to the N.

For me, it’s tempting to take List apart and make it into two books- one of the Narrator, the other the story proper. There would be minimal overlap from the former to the latter, but the former may well stand as treatise by itself. The N goes deeper than I’ve heard Morrissey go on many of these topics before, even in Autobiography, where most of these are not touched on.

(^)Interestingly and completely absent among that list there is no music. No talk of it. No mention of anything going on in music at the time. This is very surprising. Autobiography is full of this talk. Would it have been all that unique if the 4 had been members of a band, instead of runners? Then everyone would have read it as The Smiths. Disaster. Besides, he’s addressed all that in Autobiography. Without music, we are, almost, in an alternate, USA-based, young Morrissey universe. The universe of Moz the runner and not young Moz the Bowie/Ramones/NY Dolls acolyte of a few years later.

His role seemingly all-seeing, the narrator also steps in to address and reveal the inner mind of the characters. Some of the best writing in the book comes at these times, in my opinion. At once- the micro and macro view of the world, and their worlds, big and small. It’s as if everything that happens in our lives, or life, takes place in the same cosmic “mind”, only in different parts of it.

Unlike parts of Autobiography, this time, things as a whole feel sharply focused. He has compacted the story to its most essential moments, leaving the rest of the room for the N. In that way, it’s cannily done. In two outings we have a fascinating autobiography that might be a bit too expansive in parts and a amazingly compact novel that doesn’t “waste” one moment’s time. Its story, in spite of its twists and turns, could be outlined quickly- mine is less than a page, but therein lay lifetimes of choices, instincts, ramifications and intentions as seen from the eyes of youth and the aged. Each, a product of environment, experience and family like those on Page 11, has their point of view, their reasons, their dreams. Yet, in the end, each are destined to the same fates- over which they may have “limited” control.

By setting the piece in 1975 he allows some distance on the events- both figurative and literally, though of course, in the end, that doesn’t matter- all of the tale’s key points hold every bit as much today. A morality play set in 1975 that serves as a tale of warning for today, like a gift from a caring “Hey, watch out for this.” friend, lest we too wind up on the List of the Lost. The “problem” is that while many things are in our control, as we see here things also happen in life that no amount of watchfulness is going to stop.

What does his song say? “Books don’t save them, books aren’t Stanley Knives.”*

List of the Lost is published by Penguin Books.

Soundtrack for this post is “Lucky Lisp,” by the author of List of the Lost and Stephen Street from Morrissey’s Bona Drag album.  It came on one day recently and crystalized for me why it took me so long to finish this book. As in “Yes, I know it’s taking me a long time to finish. Then again, I still haven’t gotten what “Lucky Lisp” is about!” It seems these folks haven’t, either.

*-From “Reader Meet Author” By Morrissey and Boz Boorer from Southpaw Grammar published by Warner Chappell Music Publishing.

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