Nothing - Softcover

Morley, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571177999 ISBN 13: 9780571177998

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2000

Synopsis

'I've tried so hard to forget that my father killed himself, that I don't remember when he killed himself . . .?'

Leslie Ronald Morley killed himself in May 1976, or June 1977. Or July 1978. His suicide shattered the family he left behind - his wife, two teenage daughters and his son. Who was 18 or 19. Or 20. With idiosyncratic genius, Paul Morley investigates the reality and consequences of his father's suicide, a suicide which over the years has been converted through family grief and denial into something unreal, even surreal.

About this title

Review

Paul Morley had his 15 minutes of true glory with the sudden and short-lived flowering of talent at ZTT Records in the early 1980s, with the brilliance that was Frankie Goes To Hollywood and The Art of Noise. Now that he's an all-purpose journalist and media pundit, few would stop to credit him with an inner life. But with Nothing he corrects that picture. And how. Morley's life story provides the perfect recipe for long-term angst. Born on the Isle of Wight, son of a prison guard, raised in a stifling Stockport, apparently tortured throughout his adolescence and beyond by a complete absence of self-worth, he tracks most of his problems to the suicide--unexplained, perhaps unexplainable--of his father in the summer of 1977. Nothing is not always an easy read--the first dozen pages comprise Morley's meditation on a dead body, and that dense pondering fairly much sets the tone. For father was not alone-Morley explores his obsessed, obsessive reaction to the deaths of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, Marc Bolan, Elvis and it's clear that this tragedy has structured his entire life. On virtually every page there's a reference to Morley's previous attempts to write this book--with its myriad working titles (Sing A Song of Suicide, Death In The Family, you get the idea)--you soon realise that this is a life project. Of course there's a blacker-than-black comedy at work here too--from his father's orgasm in 1956 ("after the war and just before rock and roll") to the suicide-friendly discography he thoughtfully provides to help readers along. Self-indulgent? Yes. Fancy an evening down the pub with him? Not unless you come. But it is a sincere, intensely personal self-exploration that--oddly--speaks for a generation of angst-ridden, and borderline-suicidal, young men. --Alan Stewart

Synopsis

Morley revisits the past he has long struggled to forget: his childhood in Stockport, his teenage years, and the unfathomable suicide of his depressive father. He also considers how the deaths of Ian Curtis, Elvis Presley and Marc Bolan might have had an impact on the story.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571177999
• ISBN 13: 9780571177998
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 426