Morrissey was the dour black blossom of post-punk whose lithe swoons and vocal dandyisms were as positively literary as Genet’s literature was musical. In a March 2004 Guardian article entitled "Saint elsewhere," critic Brian Pera agreed as much. “Almost every other line from Saint Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre's paean to writer Jean Genet, could be applied to Morrissey, the former lead singer of the Smiths, or so it sometimes seems,” Pera claims. “Like Genet, Morrissey became what he coveted…. Morrissey, as did Genet, wove his own elaborate tapestry…which extends from one private bedroom to another – from Genet to Sartre to Morrissey.”

What Sartre attempted in his 700-page consecration, Saint Genet – one part hagiography, two parts scientia sexualitae – was, in fact, an autopsy of Genet’s literary corpse, a body which had been ossified at its peak by the philosopher’s trademark over-exposition. Genet’s criminal homoeroticism was reduced in reams of faint praise to a homogeneous criminology. Sartre had unknowingly killed Genet with kindness.

Mark Simpson’s recent love letter Saint Morrissey: A Portrait of This Charming Man by an Alarming Fan seemed to have a kindred effect on the 25-year career of the cocksure Manc turned superannuated Roman lounge lizard. Devoted fans - the so-called "irregular regulars" as Moz affectionately refers to them - and enemies alike have appeared ready in recent years to lay wreaths prematurely upon his grave.

Music punters and critical gadflies continue to prepare the pyre for Morrissey’s professional murder and sanctification, his immolation in the hell of retirement. Despite the success of 2004’s You are the Quarry, after nearly 10 years in the shadow of silence, praise lapsed quickly into eulogies of career "apotheosis" and rumors of the "final tour." Speculation of the long-anticipated Smiths’ reunion was also quashed when the former frontperson reportedly rejected a $75 million paycheck for a 2008-2009 worldwide tour. The release of last year’s beautiful but flawed Ringleader of the Tormentors and an 18-month touring schedule that left a series of canceled dates and less than stellar American ticket sales (at least on the East Coast) resurrected the same chat room gossip and blogging buzz words: Moz’s last stand. The queen is dead. Arrivederci, Mozzer.

Perhaps all of these hic jacet proceed from a chronic and overwhelming need to deify Morrissey, to capture the voice of a generation at his zenith, before it either succumbs to the follies of middle-age desperation (Elvis, Madonna, Mick Jagger) or slips into irrelevant caricature (Elvis, Madonna, Mick Jagger…and Bono). A zenith that continues its ascendance well past the Smiths, through smash hits Viva Hate, Your Arsenal, and Vauxhall and I, near-misses Kill Uncle, Maladjusted, and Southpaw Grammar, and toward the newest single-in-the-works "I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris." Through a very public "divorce" from rock ‘n' roll inamorato and collaborator Johnny Marr, media indictments of National Front sympathies and xenophobia, expatriation from the moors of Manchester to the hills of Hollywood, royalty suits from Smiths’ bassist and drummer Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, a career-spanning speculation of a very private sexuality, et. cetera, ad nauseam. Or perhaps Morrissey has simply overstayed his welcome in a pop music milieu dominated by the pay-for-play Clear Channel radio syndicate and filled with a roster of plasticine jailbait. Might his gauche resilience, then, be a final performance of Genet’s queenish adage, “To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance”?

Imagine our surprise, then, when His Obstinacy followed up the end of his latest 137-show adventure with an American reprise that brings him back for a three-week-long stretch through Tijuana, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. According to the most recent press release, “all of the venues have been specifically chosen, as they are small and intimate, where Morrissey can see the eyes of everyone in the audience, and those in attendance can be in the thick of it. The desire is to go out with some great memories for everyone, as who knows what the future will bring.”

An admonition – before reading too deeply into Morrissey’s self-mythologizing PR, with its vague implications of a veritable death upon the stage a la English eccentric Tommy Cooper, we might remember Genet’s own second coming after Sartre. As a playwright and political firebrand in the '60s and '70s, Genet ostensibly equaled and surpassed his first incarnation as France’s literary enfant terrible – affirming that the oeuvre of a condemned artist may survive long past his rebellious youth. In a patent stab at questioning his perceived immortality, Morrissey has playfully included the early 1988 B-side "Disappointed" to his recent live setlists. In one of his most trademark of lyrics the young upstart rocker now turned elder crooner taunts:

Oh, this world may lack style, I know
Each bud must blossom and grow, oh...
Young girl, one day you will be old
But the thing is, I love you now
Mmm ...
This is the last song I will ever sing [Crowd responds: "Yeah!"]
No… I’ve changed my mind again [Crowd responds: "Aaw..."]
Good night and thank you.

My dear Steven, Our Lady of the Flowers, we await your verdict and continue preparations for your sainthood.

Morrissey appears at the Fillmore, Sept. 26 and 27. Kristeen Young opens.