[books 2010] Dandy in the Underworld
Jun. 30th, 2010 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro42. Dandy in the Underworld:an unauthorised autobiography by Sebastian Horsley
I have to admit that I'd never heard of Horsley until I read about the play that's currently running in London. And then he goes and dies two weeks later. It turned out my local library had a copy of the book in stock, so I grabbed it. I didn't want to buy it because, as Jason put it "he's either going to be brilliant or a complete tosser".
Overall, I incline towards the latter, though the book is readable enough and even very funny in places. The first third of it pretty much reads itself, and I thought it was going to be fully of really quotable aphorisms[1]. He is at his best in the parts about his family (though the part of my brain that works in children's mental health wouldn't shut up about how it's a perfect clinical study of a damaged adult being the result of childhood abuse & neglect, and that if his family weren't rich he'd likely have been taken into care).
Eventually the grandiose self-loathing and self-indulgence got to me. The misogyny would have bothered me more if he didn't hate everyone, including himself, quite a lot.
At least he admits that he wants to be Oscar Wilde, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine & Marc Bolan rolled into one (particularly Wilde). I've read almost everything the first two wrote and he's not even close. This did remind me, at least, that I never got around to reading Rimbaud and Verlaine back in the early 90s when I was heavily interested in the Decadents (mainly because I was still making myself read French works in French) and I should probably do so.
[1] The only one that my brain has chosen to recall is "the problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard".
I have to admit that I'd never heard of Horsley until I read about the play that's currently running in London. And then he goes and dies two weeks later. It turned out my local library had a copy of the book in stock, so I grabbed it. I didn't want to buy it because, as Jason put it "he's either going to be brilliant or a complete tosser".
Overall, I incline towards the latter, though the book is readable enough and even very funny in places. The first third of it pretty much reads itself, and I thought it was going to be fully of really quotable aphorisms[1]. He is at his best in the parts about his family (though the part of my brain that works in children's mental health wouldn't shut up about how it's a perfect clinical study of a damaged adult being the result of childhood abuse & neglect, and that if his family weren't rich he'd likely have been taken into care).
Eventually the grandiose self-loathing and self-indulgence got to me. The misogyny would have bothered me more if he didn't hate everyone, including himself, quite a lot.
At least he admits that he wants to be Oscar Wilde, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine & Marc Bolan rolled into one (particularly Wilde). I've read almost everything the first two wrote and he's not even close. This did remind me, at least, that I never got around to reading Rimbaud and Verlaine back in the early 90s when I was heavily interested in the Decadents (mainly because I was still making myself read French works in French) and I should probably do so.
[1] The only one that my brain has chosen to recall is "the problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard".
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Date: 2010-06-30 07:48 pm (UTC)I'm going to see the play tomorrow night. I'll post and let you know how it compares!
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Date: 2010-06-30 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-01 08:38 am (UTC)