The Secret Life of Salvador Dali

Curiouser and curiouser.....

"It is not an easy matter to hold the full attention of the public for a whole half hour. I, however, have succeeded in doing it every single day for the past twenty years. My motto is: Dali must always be talked about, even if nothing good is to be said about him".

And so I spend a few minutes more, talking about Dali; How surprisingly ridiculous and outdated the themes he addresses (including his self-analysis, especially his self-analysis) seems today. The daring of the day evaporates into thin post-Freudian air, and the highly convoluted style comes across neither as surreal or geniously, but just as pure manneristic self-representation. If this is about giving the emperor what the emperor demands - then show more he did it well I guess, and I did not want to be in that demanding a la mode crowd at the time, and even less now.

I am an avid reader, and I love Dali´s illustrations for Dante´s Divina Comedia amongst other - but this I could not stomach for the half an hour a day...
The book was on my possibly-buying list..... after skimming the local library´s copy it was taken off ...
Dali´s skill with the pen does not reach the level of the knee of the man he was when he held a brush in his hands. show less

I love Dali's painting very much and have for years. I have a signed, numbered limited edition lithograph of one of his works. That said, like many great artists, he's the consummate narcissist. I can deal with that to a certain extent. What I can't deal with is an asshole who thinks he's both a genius and a great writer, when the former is debatable and this book is proof the latter is quite the opposite. I guess the current digital self publishing craze isn't the first time in history when utter crap books were published. The difference is, the so-called "authors" of today using platforms' like Amazon's either don't know how to proof and edit or don't care if they look like tenth grade dropouts -- it doesn't matter, because they can show more still publish their books and make some sales via Amazon's program. However, in Dali's time, such did not exist, and thus it typically required a manuscript be accepted by a publisher, who at least would have likely had the book proofed and edited prior to publication, hence masking bad writing to some degree, unlike contemporary writers. I'm not sure which I like less -- self published books where the "author" was too ignorant, arrogant or cheap to hire an editor, or a publisher presumably employing editors who publishes books that, while grammatically correct, are utter shit -- simply because the author is a celebrity. But then, that still happens I guess. Pity. And I thought social media had ruined grammatical and general writing skills. I can think of several areas in which one could attribute Dali's sad literary effort, but they should be obvious, so no need to mention them. He should have continued to concentrate on his painting. Brilliant there. We're not all Renaissance men, I guess... show less

One look at Dalai's paintings and you can see that he sees things in a different way. It also becomes clear in his auto biography that he sees things in a different way. But while at times I admired his absolute genius, in writing, his absolute sense of being a genius at times became a bit tiresome.Despite being an amazing man and an artistic genius, in his autobiography, he comes off as being a little bit too full of himself. But overall, a fascinating read.Dali was and still is amazing !

You may be thinking - Dali wrote an autiobiography? In fact he wrote multiple, and at least this one is as bizarre as his paintings. You get the sense that he observed certain qualities in the world, interpreted them through his own particular lens, and these transliterated those qualities onto the canvas. If you are intrigued by his art, you will be intrigued by his autobiography. It is about as compelling, but probably not as deep. I loved parts of it and scratched my head at other parts. You could spend years studying this fellow. I spent a few months giving some of his paintings serious study. I can't say I came away profoundly moved by this book in particular, but I did get the feeling that I was getting to know the artist a little show more more personally. show less

I learned from the first couple of chapters that the less I know about Dali, the better. I couldn't stomach the rampant narcissism and psychopathic behavior. I usually like learning more about an artist and contextualizing it with their work, but I'll pass on Dali, thanks.

This book reads like a Dali painting. Dali talks about the early parts of his life including intra-uterine memories and false childhood memories. A must read written in Dali's unique style for all fans of surrealism.

Outrageous but absolutely engaging "autobiography" of the artist who famously said,"The only difference between myself and a mad man is that I am not mad."
One of my two favourite books of all.