Joy Division: Piece by Piece
by Paul Morley
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Book Summary Information
Author: Paul MorleyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-28
ISBN: 0859654044
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Plexus Publishing
Book Reviews of Joy Division: Piece by Piece
Book Review: Joy Division
Summary: 3 Stars
I got this book because I am still a bit obsessed with Joy Division after all these years - after what seems like a commonly experienced 15 years of avoiding them. And so of course I bought a book with this title. I even enjoyed quite a bit of it. Be warned - it is not easy reading. Morley makes a point of not wanting to write a standard book, e.g. who did what, where and when, arguing that others have and will, and that the subject matter requires a different approach. It is deliberately disjointed. This can be understood and accepted. There is also a lot of word-for-word repetition (is this deliberate?). My main disappointment is the fact that a lot of the book is about other things. Some of this is interesting, particularly his attempt to come to terms with his father's suicide (note: a suicide in the family does not seem to be a prerequisite for obsession with this band, but it probably helps). But there's a lot of other stuff, like on the general music scene at the time. The final straw for me was when I reached a very lengthy "interview" with Cab Voltaire. One could argue that this puts things in context but I reckon not. Like another reviewer, after I had established what the real title of the book should have been, I ended up skimming through looking for words like "Joy" and "Division" where I would pause and read for a bit. On the main subject matter of the book: when all's said and done, no one will ever "understand" Joy Division, not the members themselves, not those close to them and not those interested from afar. Certainly, Morley doesn't in the slightest seem (or claim?) to have come to an understanding of them and what happened and why it happened and why their music affects us still.
Summary of Joy Division: Piece by Piece
Paul Morley knew Joy Division intimately. He not only wrote extensively and evocatively of the "mood, atmosphere and ephemeral terror" that enveloped the group and their doomed front man, Ian Curtis, but he was present when Curtis suffered his life-changing epileptic seizure following a London concert in April 1980 and was the only journalist permitted to view Curtis' corpse. Joy Division: Piece By Piece encompasses his complete writings on the group, both contemporary and retrospective. In addition to collecting all of Morley's classic works about the band, the book includes his eloquent Ian Curtis obituary and hindsight pieces on the group's significance, framed by an extensive retrospective essay, as well as his reviews of the films 24 Hour Party People and Control. Morley, who emerged from Manchester at the same time as Joy Division, effortlessly evokes that city's zeitgeist and psycho-geography to tell the story of this uniquely intense group.
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