Michael Bracewell's The Smiths

Commentary on "The Smiths: a novella" by Michael Bracewell

Michael Bracewell’s new book, The Smiths: a novella, is the closest thing I have read that reminds me of the joy of reading Andre Breton’s Nadja. A fictional book, but it could possibly be true: the author travels various landscapes in London and Los Angeles with the beautiful actor Carole Bouquet, while thinking about the band The Smiths. A literary surrealist narrative where one matches the passion of a music group and its specific, highly visual culture with the charms of the old-school world of Bouquet. Bracewell’s mention of the Eric Rohmer film Full Moon In Paris is a wonderful juxtaposition of my memory of seeing the film a day before I picked up this book.

If one is cynical, one can call this a name-dropping tale, but among those in the “know,” one can have a discussion with someone special just using nouns. Bracewell is such a writer who walks in a familiar world that would be obscure to some, but for others in the circle of heaven (or hell), it's a world one can share. The beauty of The Smiths is that it’s a critique or admiration of the band, but set in a fictional account.

The Morrissey of The Smiths, and the now current Morrissey, is almost a different presence, and reading this book reminds me how much I miss the Morrissey of the 1980s, and how time has changed things. Nothing stands still, not even memories, so in that sense it is never about living in the past, but using the past as a canvas for how one feels in the present. That is the great strength in this book.