Penguin Classics: why are they publishing Morrissey's autobiography?

The imprint normally reserved for such luminaries as Homer, Virgil and Henry James is publishing the singer's memoir

Sunday 13 October 2013 The Guardian

Penguin Classics … about to welcome a new contributor. Photograph: Sarah Lee

That's not very classic. That's when the imprint started. The first book they published was older.
How much older? Several thousand years. It was Homer's Odyssey, translated by EV Rieu.
A high-minded enterprise. Indeed. Rieu became editor of the series and oversaw the first 160 classic texts, including the Iliad, the Gospels and Virgil's Aeneid.
And after Rieu? Penguin started publishing such literary parvenus as Laurence Sterne, Henry James and Maupassant.
I always hate that sort of dumbing down. They even introduced "modern classics" – Borges, Forster, Fernando Pessoa.
What next? JK Rowling? Worse, I'm afraid.
Not Martin Amis. No, Morrissey.
Who? A popular singer who has written his autobiography.
And when, pray, was it published? It will appear on Thursday.
So who has deemed it a classic? Morrissey. "I'd like it to go to Penguin," he said in 2011, "but only if they published it as a Classic."

More