The Last of the Famous International Playboys

The Last of the Famous International Playboys appears as a Morrissey song epigraph before the chapter dated 21 October 1981. Its compact passage gives a speaker who disavows being naturally evil while acknowledging harmful actions, presenting those actions as attempts to become more attractive to someone else. The final question makes the effort sound uncertain rather than triumphant, leaving desire, wrongdoing, and failure pressed together without identifying the speaker or resolving the appeal.

Attribution and Placement

The passage is credited to Morrissey and identified as The Last of the Famous International Playboys. It follows the preceding epigraph attribution to Siw Malmkvist’s “Love Trouble” and its translator, Laurie Thompson. The page then marks the day as Wednesday, 21 October 1981. This placement makes the song reference a threshold into the dated chapter, but the evidence does not establish a character within the narrative as its speaker or explain a direct connection between the song and the events that follow.

The Speaker’s Account

The lyric voice distinguishes between an inherent disposition and chosen conduct: the speaker denies being naturally evil but admits to doing harmful things. The passage therefore holds self-description and responsibility in tension. The denial of innate evil does not erase the acknowledged actions; instead, the speaker offers an interpersonal reason for them, describing them as efforts to become more appealing to another person. The addressee matters to the speaker’s self-presentation, but the passage does not disclose who that person is or whether the attraction is reciprocated.

Appeal and Uncertainty

The speaker’s explanation makes wrongdoing part of an attempted act of attraction. That account does not present the conduct as justified; it presents it as directed toward someone else, and the closing question puts the success of that effort in doubt. The result is a compressed, uneasy movement from denial of an evil nature, through admission of action and stated motive, to uncertainty about its effect. As an epigraph, the passage supplies this emotional and moral tension before the chapter’s date, while leaving its relationship to the chapter’s particular characters and events unstated.