Comrades:

Two weeks ago, we took our first steps on a long journey into the mind of a beguiling yet frustrating pop star. We formed a club. We set high goals. Some of us even bought the book.

But I never told you that this journey would be an easy one.

Early on, there were grumbles about Morrissey’s Autobiography. It seemed overlong. It made one colleague feel self-conscious while reading it on the subway. One Morrissey newcomer was like, “Is he serious?”

Then came our first milestone, page 145. I wrote about Morrissey’s childhood TV regimen and the music he listened to as a teenager, trying desperately to be all "Hey, he’s a normal person just like us!" But my Soundcheck co-workers just weren’t having it.

This week, two of them gave me notice that they had officially stopped reading Autobiography. I asked them to explain in an email (even though we all sit two feet apart). Here are their responses:

From associate producer Katie Bishop:

I am not well acquainted with Morrissey, or The Smiths as a whole, to be honest. I’m certainly aware of them, but I never really got into their music or had friends who forced me to give them a good hard listen. So I was pretty excited to dive in to Morrissey 101 when our fearless leader Joel kicked off our book club.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that this book will be the way that I finally get to know The Smiths. I got to about page 70 and felt completely exhausted by what felt like a gloomy 65-page list of British TV program(me)s that Morrissey was ambivalent about as a youngster. I know, I know, I’m exaggerating, and I should keep reading, if for nothing else to make my boss happy. But I’m also currently knee-deep in a review copy of Francine Prose’s new book about cross-dressing Parisians in the 20th century, and until last week I was reading Bonk (about the science of sex) by Mary Roach for my OTHER book club. Seriously, what would you choose? A drab self-pitying portrait of a sulky British singer’s childhood, or a novel about Paris and a cheeky book about sex??? The choice was pretty clear to me.

The choice was yours, Katie. You’ve made it. This being the famously chaste Morrissey, we cannot expect much sex in his memoir (and even less in the U.S. edition). I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. You’ve missed out on what will surely prove to be the book’s highlight: The formation of the Smiths, with Morrissey using plain, completely human-sounding prose to describe his early friendship and creative partnership with guitarist and co-songwriter Johnny Marr (full disclosure: a personal hero).

Psst: If you want to read this part, it starts at page 145. Just sayin’. And the Meat Is Murder section is awesome. 

OK, so scratch Katie off the list. Probably. But digital producer Mike Katzif is surely in for the long haul, right? Mike’s tolerance for out-there culture is higher than just about anybody’s (except that of our host John Schaefer).

I submit Mike’s email – an essay, really – for your review. Read it and weep:

A few years back I came to the conclusion that there was no possible way I was ever going to read all the best books in history, and I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. There’s just so much media out there in the world to experience, to enjoy and distract me, so I decided I’d no longer be a so-called bitter-ender. If something isn’t moving me, or interesting, time to move on to something else, rather than slog through it as if it were tedious homework. This certainly is the case with Morrissey’s autobiography, which is about as impenetrable a bio I’ve read in awhile.

The long passages about his earliest dour childhood are hard to get through – it’s so specific I almost wonder how he possibly remembers this part of his life in such detail – occasionally punctuated by interesting stuff about first discovering bands that influenced him. And as the book goes on, I keep waiting to hear about portions of his life I recognize – his early music making, forming the Smiths, touring, things that somehow may illuminate or reveal truths about the music I’m familiar with in some new way. But it just takes too long to get to that point. And with no chapter markers, it’s just flows and flows in a stream of consciousness style that makes it difficult to parse.

This book needs an editor to restructure the narrative -- and move it forward. Maybe that’s a more traditional biography that Morrissey was uninterested in delivering, but it would make it more fun to read.

So yeah, I sorta put it down and moved on to reading True Detective fan theory blog posts. You know, important stuff.

All I can say to you, Mike, is this: In the time it took you to write the above column, you could have knocked down another 10 pages of Autobiography.

Listen, I don’t really blame Katie and Mike. The book does tank at certain points, and there’s one notorious section that I’m absolutely dreading: the epic diss of Smiths drummer Mike Joyce. Here’s how Colin Meloy of the Decemberists described it in a post for The Talkhouse:

It’s relentless, a literary slog in the true sense of the word. And it only gets worse: The 100-some-odd pages he spends recounting, in bitterest detail, his legal battles with former Smiths drummer Mike Joyce is virtually unreadable, a literary tangent that would make the most incidental reader long for Melville’s epic whaling digression in Moby Dick. It’d be comical if it weren’t so desperately sad.

Ooof. But isn’t “desperately sad” why we got into this in the first place? He’s Morrissey after all. Also, I have it on good accord that on page 426 there is some kind of kidnapping attempt in Mexico. How can we resist?

Stay with me, brothers and sisters! The darkest hour is just before the dawn! We will bask in the sun of victory together! Also, this:

This light will never go out,

Joel