What a mass of contradictions this book is. Or, to be more precise, what a mass of contradictions this 10-year-old long-form form essay is. Typical of UK cultural critic Paul Morley’s form, The Awfully Big Adventure is as much deliberate conundrum as self-confession, an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink treatise that was originally written after Michael Jackson’s death in late June 2009.
The essay was first published in Loops, a periodical established by publisher Faber & Faber as (writes Morley in a rambling foreword, glibly titled The Awfully Modest Introduction) “a temporary, last-ditch attempt to rescue the imperial idea of the rock magazine with its egotistical writers, intense, speculative reviews and rampant printed pages”.
Now published in book form (but not flagged by the publisher in pre-publicity or on the book jacket blurb as a decade-old essay, which seems remiss) to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Jackson’s death, one of several positive things you can say about it is that at least the publisher and writer can’t be accused of cashing in on Leaving Neverland, the recently aired documentary that revealed further disturbing disclosures about the singer’s sexual abuse of children. Rather, Morley aims to requisition the many mysteries surrounding Jackson and gather them into his own framework of exhibitionist, sometimes self-serving critique.
Such an approach is clear from the foreword, wherein Morley wistfully recalls the type of rock critic he had been on and off since the late 1970s, an era when he “was once powerful enough to be in control for better or worse of the music’s creative and cultural direction”.
Restless nonsense
Puffing up his status from the very start as an inarguable arbiter of taste places the reader in an immediate state of caution. As it turns out, what transpires is six of one and half a dozen of the other. This is characteristic of Morley, a pop culture critic who is at his best when he fuses tangents with linearity. To be fair, there is a lot of this mixture to be found in The Awfully Big Adventure, but you have to wade through some restless nonsense to get to it.
Part and parcel of this is to sidestep, as quickly as possible, Morley’s unapologetic self-regard. “To be honest, my very first thoughts upon seeing and hearing that Michael Jackson had for certain died,” he writes, “were professional. I thought about myself. I thought, what the hell am I going to say when someone asks, as they surely will, very soon, what my opinion is about Michael Jackson?” (You have to smile at the words “very soon”, don’t you?)
Other effortlessly irritating page fillers include three lengthy listicles (titled “What is Michael Jackson according to Google”) that stretch boundaries of the reader’s trust, a selection of tweets (“I get that mj’s death was tragic, but does it have to be shown everywhere?”), and Morley’s almost endless streams of borderline repetition as to the highs and lows of Jackson’s flaws and virtues. Such downsides are littered throughout the book, but when Morley shoves them aside for solid analysis of Jackson as an emblematic pop culture figure, it’s a completely different matter – simply put, when he wears this particular hat, there are very few critics who can outclass him.
Effective smokescreens
Morley’s central on-point thrust is that Jackson – like very many pop culture figures – quickly built around him several effective smokescreens. These included the pop musician’s dishonorable art of faking sincerity and charm, and the talent to instill belief into millions of people that he actually was what he claimed: the King of Pop. Transforming from an enthralling teenage pop star to a severely troubled mature pop icon was enabled, ventures Morley, by a “professional and metaphysical agility” born out of, as a child, having continuously faked being an adult.
The book progresses beyond what shaped Jackson’s dysfunctions to intermittently sharp critiques of his music. Noting that once producer Quincy Jones departed (Jones produced 1979’s Off the Wall, 1982’s Thriller, and 1987’s Bad), Jackson’s creative life went by the wayside. Jackson’s concerns, posits Morley, became more about his obsession with fame, physical appearance, and the manner in which his “sanity, soul and reputation fell apart”.
A salutary tale about how delusion and a combined sense of entitlement and influence can persuade people to do things they would never rightly dream of, The Awfully Big Adventure isn’t the book you’ll want for a straight run through of the Michael Jackson story. Those enthusiastic, however, for a meandering, sometimes ostentatious overview of the man’s life and death will find much to occupy (and frustrate) them.
