This failure of the world to recognize him became a constant concern for Morrissey. In a 1984 interview, he explains how his background conspired with his appearance to perpetuate this failure: "Because I come from a penniless background-a shack upon a hill-people find it fake that I come bounding down the hill clutching a copy of [Oscar Wilde's] De Profundis. By rights, I should be sitting here talking about Sheffield Wednesday [the football team] or the length of [host of Match of the Day] Jimmy Hill's beard. But I was locked away for years, reading volume after volume."
This notion of Morrissey as an avid reader only furthers the connection. No doubt many of his fans likewise turned to books as an escape from reality and loneliness. As Morrissey once explained about his favorite literary characters, "these people replaced the friends I never had." And his invocation of Oscar Wilde acts as almost a password to other outsiders looking for an ally.
Wilde is often referenced as Morrissey's greatest influence, and the assertion is not unfounded. The song "Cemetry Gates" recounts the singer's friendship with his closest friend, Linder Sterling, to whom he sings, "Keats and Yeats are on your side/but you lose/'Cause Wilde is on mine." Asked about the influence of Wilde in 1984, Morrissey explained, "As I blundered through my late teens, I was quite isolated and Oscar Wilde meant much more to me. In a way he became a companion... As I get older the adoration increases. I'm never without him. It's almost biblical."
Wilde is a perfect hero for Morrissey. He dressed well and in fashion, but with a soft edge and long hair that transgressed masculine convention. He was intelligent and charming, but with a sharp wit that could be funny, provocative, and deadly. His emotional clarity must have been a bracing relief to Morrissey, whose clutched copy of De Profundis contained the kind of revelations that Smiths' lyrics aimed at: "Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask. There are times when Sorrow seems to me to be the only truth." And his ambiguity-personally, sexually, intellectually, and emotionally-this "intriguing uncertainty" that George Orwell once described of Wilde, seems a clear inspiration for Morrissey's double persona. But most of all, Wilde's clear, unabashed success, despite his dandy-isms, despite his criticism of society, despite his two years of hard labor for "gross indecency" with other men, must have had an immense impact on Morrissey. After Shakespeare, Wilde was the most read author in twentieth-century Great Britain, an astonishing success for a convict who died bankrupt and exiled in the year 1900.
For Morrissey to have found a historical precedent for the type of life he was after is of massive import. To know that someone else could have emerged from such sadness (Morrissey once described him as "a creature persistently creased in pain"), to know that someone could embrace beauty with such vigor, to realize that someone could live in opposition to "social decency" and still emerge world famous and eternally relevant must've been a tremendous relief to Morrissey. And his lyrics, record jackets, stage shows, and interviews are dense with references to Wilde. But when Morrissey was asked who drove him to write, which figure had the greatest impact on his work, and whom he admired most, the answer was not Wilde. "I've never made any secret of the fact that at least 50 per cent of my writing can be blamed on Shelagh Delaney who wrote A Taste of Honey," Morrissey replied in a 1986 interview.