Wednesday, January 24, 2018

From stage to page

You'd assume that any article on the best and worst attempts at novels by famous musicians would feature Morrissey's execrable List Of The Lost - and, in the case of this piece by the BBC's Jeremy Allen, you'd be right. It's pleasing just to be able to savour those deliciously savage reviews once again.

Elsewhere, Nick Cave makes not one but two appearances, for his debut And The Ass Saw The Angel (an extraordinary book, by all accounts) and The Death Of Bunny Munro (which was, shall we say, rather less well received).

Of those featured, only Leonard Cohen came to music from the world of literature rather than the other way around. I've got one of his books sitting on my shelves waiting to be read, so it's good to know that I probably won't be wasting my time.

That said, I refuse to believe that former Sleeper vocalist Louise Wener can write, and, despite the comments from Allen and its contemporary critics, Serge Gainsbourg's Evguenie Sokolov sounds to be at very least an amusing oddity: "a 90-page narrative about a man who used his uncontrollable flatulence to create works of fine art before taking his own life"...

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