I very rarely leave a review for a book I read so little of: DNF @14%, so bear that in mind, but I resent this book.

I picked it up randomly at the library in a rush because I am hyperfixated on Surrealism and Dalì, particularly his early work, at the moment and thought this was more of a biography/ memoir, rather than what it actually is. I haven't enjoyed it from the jump, but I forced myself to keep reading because I knew Dalì actually becomes a central figure, eventually. As much as I adore his work, I can't help be morbidly curious about how much of much his self aggrandising and general dickheadery increased exponentially as he aged.

What this actually is: the bargain version of something like The Wolf of Wall Street (not a film I even liked), but without any of the charm and skill that Scorsese and the cast bring to the endeavour. It's just a nouveau riche bourgeois yuppie bragging about how much money he made, fucking people over (who admittedly are rich, so LOL), and alternating between telling you how much he does or doesn't like the rich guy stuff he starts doing.

I fucking hate this guy. He's executive wanker in an 80s movie-coded. Like, I support securing the bag and it's always fun to see people with more money than sense get ripped off, but there's just no way to enjoy that or be anything but repulsed by a guy who instantly becomes more of an entitled prick than any of the people he's actually fleecing.

The whole book feels like constant shitty flexing. Maybe there is supposed to be an attempt to play it straight, no remorse in the moment, as with The Wolf of Wall Street, but the author, and presumably ghost writer, just don't have the chops to do that kind of subtlety. But, more, than anything, it just reads like a pathetic guy flexing.

The writing is terrible. It's readable and chuggable, but there isn't a scrap of artistry or soul in it. It just feels like life vanity, cash grab, airport book crap. If I had a long flight and absolutely nothing else to do this book would be a godsend, but otherwise I want nothing to do with it and wish I had gone with my gut.

Oof. I really don't normally go this hard, especially on such an early DNF, but I really did hate this book. ( )

This is perfect for art or Dali lovers but I think that because it is a non-fiction novel it was a bit slow in parts. Overall I liked it even though some parts were a bit disturbing, definitely not a book for children. ( )

Dali & I, by Stan Lauryssens
I knew early on I wasn’t going to like this book. I put it down and picked it back up several times (knowing I owed Library Thing a review and had to finish it). Twice I had to start again from the beginning, having automatically erased any memory of the story from my mind. Finally, I plowed through to the end. I wish I could say I took something more away from the book than the thought that thank God it was over.
I don’t enjoy the staccato 1940s detective paperback style of the author for starters, but I can forgive a lack of beauty in sentence construction if there is value in the plot. Ostensibly, this was the story of a Belgian man (the author) who gave up his job as a cheese maker to become the Hollywood liaison for a Belgian celebrity magazine. Faced with no funding to actually travel to Hollywood and do his interviews, he pasted together articles based on reading the work of other writers. His ‘interview’ with famed artist Salvador Dali attracted the attention of a man putting together an investment company, who hired the author to be an art dealer specializing in Dali’s works.
Suddenly, the author finds himself rolling in money and travelling the world ‘investing’ the often ill-gotten (or at the least, unreported) revenue of clients in Dali artwork. Ironically, we eventually find out how Dali’s work was frequently forged, often mass produced, and mostly produced by artists he hired in secret. With the author scamming his clients and Dali doing the same, there is a tremendous grey area in how these transactions were happening. Unfortunately, while this would make tremendous novel or memoir, this author had no skill in crafting the intricacies of such scams—or perhaps he had a legal or moral obligation to others to remain vague. Either way, the reader is left wondering if the author ever really had any grasp on the story he was telling.
If the above weren’t enough to make me use this book to start my next barbeque, I learned way, way, way more about Dali’s sex life then I had ever hoped to know. How true the stories of perversion and debauchery are, I certainly don’t feel I can trust the author’s reliability as a source, but true or not, they were just plain gross. We were also treated to great detail about Dali’s famous moustache, which interested me even less.
Along the way, the author enters into a relationship, has a child, goes to jail, and loses pretty much everything. However, he fails to impart any sense of what he was thinking or feeling, treating it all with a few sentences here and there, an occasional adjective and an hour or two of soul searching about what made him a crook. His wife, Anna, shows signs of being a welcomingly complex character, but she seems to cease being a human and becomes wallpaper after their marriage.
The lone saving grace for me in the entire book dealt with Anna and her village, where she takes Stan to visit when they meet while she serves as his tour guide to Dali’s hometown. There is some correlation drawn to Dali’s early and innovative artwork and the Catalonian landscape and way of life. It is not nearly enough to overcome the book’s shortcomings, but it showed the author was able to make some spiritual connection to the art at some point.
Without wasting too much more time on this thoroughly dismissible book, I did a cursory look at what the Internet had to offer on him, and it appears the author’s website has put out the majority of the information available, including endless announcements of Al Pacino’s commitment to play the role of Dali when the book is made into a movie (to be happening at any moment, apparently). The Times carried a brief article in June of 2008 regarding the possible screenplay, mentioning the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation as having “vowed to take the necessary legal actions to defend the artist’s reputation.”
I wish the Foundation had been able to stop the publication of this book and saved us all the trouble of reading it. ( )

It is surprising that the author of this supposedly non fiction book received the Hercules Poirot prize, an award of which there is not much to find on the internet. The style of writing is very basic and some of the sentence structure is awkward at best.

With respect to the content I must admit that from the moment the author wrote that he fabricated celebrity interviews he lost me. From that point on I kept comparing this book with the much better written 'Catch me if you can'. Just like that infamous novel, this work of (non) fiction reeks of nothing more than reader deception instead of a somewhat exaggerated account of facts.

Not only are the claims in 'Dali and I' far-fetched, the author would be rather stupid if indeed he defrauded his clients for millions and later wrote in graphic detail about them. A fair number of those clients are more than likely still alive and I can not imagine them reading this (non) fiction calmly.

If taken as a work of fiction I found it disappointing. None of the characters are interesting, least of all Dali and the author themselves, which is strange for such a flamboyant person as Dali was. The plot construction revolving around the author coming to terms with his guild and lapsing back into crime is not as well crafted as was Frank Abagnale's final employment for the FBI as a consultant. ( )

I received this book through the LT Early Reviewers program over a year ago, but hadn't made it past the first few pages until yesterday. Since I was on my way to Florida and had planned a visit to the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, I grabbed this book to read on the plane. The airline's inflight magazine was more interesting. Yet, I decided that I would read at least the first 100 pages. This is one of the most disjointed, poorly written memoirs I have ever read. I realize that I was reading an uncorrected proof, but didn't someone at St Martin's Press think about editing this? Imagine being trapped at a cocktail party with a drunken know-it-all who is rambling about his exploits and dropping as many celebrity names as possible. That is what reading this book is like. The book's cover claims that there will be a movie with Pacino and Cillian Murphy. The website claims Catherine Zeta-Jones will star as well. But, the film as been in pre-production now for a few years and isn't scheduled for release until 2011. My guess is that someone is trying to find a kernel of a script in this long-winded bloated book by a self-confessed crook. The bookcover also claims that Lauryssens won the "Hercule Poirot Award" for Crime fiction in 2002. The only reference I can find on the web to this award is in promotional copy or reviews for this book. Another ruse by an author who apparently things that anyone who reads this is really stupid? ( )