Reader’s Corner: Morrissey, Book Two

Somehow Morrissey went from the crooning pseudo-Wildean frontman for The Smiths to the first modern writer to have their book made into an instant Penguin Classic. For all that we love about him, his fey and aloof humor and those jabbing little daggers of surreality in his lyrics, it didn’t seem quite proper at the time that his life’s story would be in the catalog right there next to Montaigne.

But, then, as the publisher apparently argued, “it is a classic in the making.” That could be said...