So Morrissey is going to have his autobiography published in Penguin Classics. Joining the likes of Susan Sontag, Italo Calvino, Vladimir Nabokov and Evelyn Waugh on the imprint’s non-fiction list, Morrissey’s signing must raise some serious questions about what the ‘classic’ label means in the twenty-first century. As a legend in his own lifetime and someone who brought the most world-weary wisdom to the heart of youth culture, Morrissey has a better claim than many to instant classic status. But the arguments that bedevilled the publication of the autobiography (just a couple of weeks ago it was going to be pulled thanks to a ‘last minute content disagreement’) makes one worry about the timelessness of this particular screed.

Will it be annotated? My copy of L. P. Hartley’s The Go-Between (only a Penguin Modern Classic, not a Penguin Classic) manages to provide seven footnotes in the first two paragraphs, many of them giving away the plot and decoding the symbolism for readers who like to have their symbolism decoded. I hope we won’t have to work out Morrissey’s symbolism all by ourselves.