Faber & Faber Begs for Morrissey's Memoirs

BY Stephen CarlickPublished Feb 2, 2010

When it comes to celebrity autobiographies we'd love to read, one from Morrissey tops the list. After all, it seems highly unlikely that there's anybody else as loopy and eccentric as Moz that could write prose as dramatic and engaging. It's no wonder, then, that the man's memoirs, which he is currently in the process of writing, are beginning to make publishers froth at the mouth.

As the Guardian reports, the first to foam is British publishing house Faber and Faber, whose editorial director, Lee Brackstone, posted an open letter to Morrissey on the publishing website's blog begging him to let Faber publish the memoirs.

In the letter, Blackstone gushes, "I can only fantasise [sic] that at least you might read my letter through and consider the pleasures and prestige of being an author at Faber, the last great family-owned independent publishing house in the western hemisphere."

To further sway the singer, Blackstone aims for his literary soft spot: "You see, we love the perverse and the contrary at Faber. And we also like to think we are the custodians of twentieth-century Modernist poetry. In fact, we are. Our shelves groan and bulge and spill over under the weight of Ezra, Larkin, Hughes and Heaney. And that's just the surface; deep as it may seem. We feel very strongly that you belong in this company."

Perverse and contrary? He's got your number, Morrissey. Blackstone even intentionally wrote the letter in "inflated, pretentious" prose to appeal to Morrissey's "playful side."

The letter can be read in its entirety here.

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