"List of the Lost" quoted in the best books of 2015 by Peter Fleming - Times Higher Education

Books of 2015 - Times Higher Education
Scholars and senior sector figures reveal their favourites – read for work, for pleasure, or both – of the titles published this year

Excerpt:

Peter Fleming, professor of business and society, City University London
(...) Everybody hated Morrissey’s novel List of the Lost (Penguin), but it’s brilliant. This allegory takes us back to 1975, and students of Thatcherism and Reaganomics will note the significance. Four young athletes encounter their grotesque future in a forest and murder him. Human qualities are thrown on the bonfire, making this laconic fable the perfect Orwellian companion for the neoliberal age.
 
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Refreshing.
 
I confess I originally misread the source as High Times at first glance.

So it would appear the keen literary critic with adequate intellectual girth to comprehend LOTL in full allegorical glory was a professor of business and society. If only the various dailies had enlisted their best and brightest financial reporters to review the book back in September - you know, instead of literary and arts critics - perhaps we would have avoided all the contretemps in its wake.

I still prefer this review: http://shocko.info/words/2015/10/13/morrissey-list-of-the-lost. I think one of the comments following the article sums up my feelings on the whole thing: "A writer who [couldn't] escape his own voice."
 
You omitted the "to be used for toilet paper" portion...
 
Have you seen that?

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/cn/books/best-books-of-2015

Peter Fleming, professor of business and society, City University London
(...) Everybody hated Morrissey’s novel List of the Lost (Penguin), but it’s brilliant. This allegory takes us back to 1975, and students of Thatcherism and Reaganomics will note the significance. Four young athletes encounter their grotesque future in a forest and murder him. Human qualities are thrown on the bonfire, making this laconic fable the perfect Orwellian companion for the neoliberal age.

The guy seems like a serious academic. I’d be interested in hearing how he would defend his opinion. Not that I think it would change my opinion on the book’s literary merits though! He’s published articles recently about work - the lyrics to Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now seems right up his academic alley.
 
The guy seems like a serious academic. I’d be interested in hearing how he would defend his opinion. Not that I think it would change my opinion on the book’s literary merits though! He’s published articles recently about work - the lyrics to Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now seems right up his academic alley.

Explain, not defend. Why would he need to defend his own opinion? Because most other people, including you, have a different opinion? What a sad logic.
 
Explain, not defend. Why would he need to defend his own opinion? Because most other people, including you, have a different opinion? What a sad logic.

Ok - point taken, especially since I am genuinely curious about his reasoning. I found the book impossibly written but that doesn't mean it may not have some merit in other areas.
 

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