Kewpie sends the link to the post in the forums by joe frady (via
Morrissey reddit):
Linder's Isherwood to Morrissey's Garbo...
Linder has written an excellent biographical essay for 'Frieze' magazine, issue #135, November-December 2010. It's titled 'A Northern Soul'.
It begins: "I've recently found solace in Christopher Isherwood's auto-biographical writings from the late 1930s, written when he was trying to reconcile his affiliation with Swami Prabhavananda with driving fast cars with Greta Garbo through Hollywood. Exchange Garbo for Morrissey and Hollywood for Heysham, and you get close to my life at present." (Linder is currently studying the Sikh science of Nád Yoga, classical Indian music and learning Gurmukhi, a sacred Sikh language)
Further on, this: "As a 16 year old I began to read books by Germaine Greer, Eva Figes, Kate Millet and Betty Friedan, Mary Daly, Barbara Walker, Penelope Shuttle, Marion Woodman and Nor Hall, and to look at the work of the artist Penny Slinger. Without them I may have stayed on the council estate and dropped Valium like Smarties. Later, Morrissey and I read Daly's book 'Gyn/Ecology: the Metaethics of Radical Feminism' (1978) and laughed; it was glorious, she took a hammer to the pronoun and smashed it to smithereens. Morrissey was the only person that I knew then who truly understood the importance of language; he's still vigilant now, never uttering a syllable that he hasn't held up to the light and studied."
The whole piece is a wonderfully enjoyable read (not yet available on-line); fascinating biographical detail as well as enlightening consideration of her recent 'Darktown Cakewalk' work.