Dandy in the Underworld: An Unauthorized Autobiography (P.S.) (Paperback)

by Sebastian Horsley (Author)
Key Phrases: taking crack, High Hall, Jimmy Boyle, Marc Bolan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
British artist Horsley's biggest claim to fame is the crucifixion ceremony he underwent in the Philippines in 2000, an attempt to break the limits of life and make an artistic statement. The feat is the apex of Horsley's unauthorized autobiography, which chronicles his life as an artist, a junkie and a self-professed dandy. Pithy and engaging, Horsley bares all, painting himself as a misogynist, a sexual deviant and a narcissist. While the memoir starts slow—drawn out accounts of childhood travails, tawdry family history and boarding-school miseries—Horsley's writing picks up when he's describing his cyclical addiction to and withdrawal from drugs. A crack high is a whole-body orgasm and heartbreaking ecstasy; heroin is molten sunshine. By the time he is on a raft in the Philippines, paddling to the site of his crucifixion, he's been in and out of exclusive rehab clinics and self-imposed bouts of cold turkey time, not to mention a stint as a prostitute. By the time a 50-something Horsley winds down his life history—wealthy and privileged from birth (his family owned a food empire), he was also uncannily successful in the stock market—he is nearly bankrupt. He ran through, by his own estimation, £100,000 on his drug addictions and the same amount of money each on his other addiction, prostitutes, and tailored clothing befitting his stature as a dandy. (Mar. 11)Correction: The title of Lea Jacobson's book was left out in the December 10 issue. The title is Bar Flower: My Decadently Destructive Days and Nights as a Tokyo Nightclub Hostess.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (March 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061461253
• ISBN-13: 978-0061461255
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #275,400 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious, Grim, and Hilarious, April 22, 2008

By	R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"I am not a writer. I am a performer. Writing is merely a way of bringing myself to the notice of the world." Thus says Englishman Sebastian Horsley, and he certainly got my notice in _Dandy in the Underworld: An Unauthorized Autobiography_ (Harper Perennial), although reading it is often like the horrific roadside crash you cannot take your eyes off. A reader cannot help thinking that this is yet another fake memoir; it is just too weird, too incredible, even if it were written by an actual dandy, bisexual, drug-addicted, self-obsessed, obsessive-compulsive, libertine artist. As far as I can tell, Horsley really exists, and really has had the adventures recalled here, although if he has exaggerated some for comic effect that is the least of his sins. If you want to read a memoir by an addict who has grueling tales of the overpowering effects of drugs and the profound misery that they can cause, but you don't want to be made miserable, check this out. Horsley is hilarious. He jokes on every page, witty puns and turns of phrases that simultaneously counter and highlight any grimness in his story. He may borrow (nay, steal) a phrase from Oscar Wilde or Quentin Crisp, but this is a compellingly original memoir, strange, revolting, funny, and self-serving by turns. "If you can't brag about doing something well," he advises, "then brag about doing it badly. At any rate, brag." He has taken to heart his own advice.

In a chapter which is the apology for the dandy's life ("Mein Camp"), Horsley lists gloves, shirts ("I devoted myself to their design"), hats, and suits of all colors, and let's just give you the ones that were pink: "Soft pink, hard pink, petal pink, shell pink, shocking pink, even more shocking pink, flaming pink, salmon pink, prawn-cocktail pink, spam pink. In the pink pink." He enjoyed something like a thousand prostitutes. His drug-soaked days and nights are described specifically, and with his superb choice of descriptive detail, Horsley gives an idea of the attractions of drug use as well as the rot it causes. There were various descents into hopelessness and degradation, including disastrous stints in drug rehab, which he describes with the zingy humor that infuses even the book's darkest pages. In this strange book are two extraordinary sections that would seem to have no place in it. One is Horsley's adventures in diving to find the great white shark. The other is that he got himself crucified. He went to the Philippines in 2000 for the annual Good Friday crucifixions, "a seething, chaotic, blood-spattered circus in which the profoundest devotion and the most avid entrepreneurship meet." It was part of his artistic suffering and (though he has profound disdain for religion) part of his admiration for Christ, who "... after all, had profound style. He was the ultimate dandy... All great stylists borrow a lot from the wardrobe of Christ - everything in fact except those dreadful clothes." Horsley was invited to have painkillers beforehand: "Now, the one time I actually needed drugs, I declined." He fulfills the assignment, but the foot support of his particular cross gave way as he was being raised to the vertical, so he fell off, preventing his planned half-hour stay. "Bad carpentry was the cause, as Jesus, the carpenter, would probably have well understood."

There are less spectacular peculiarities throughout the book. Horsley writes laceratingly about his wife and about himself as husband; there is a good deal of misogyny here, although upon her death he writes movingly of memories he holds. He became a fan of the Scottish gangster Jimmy Boyle, who became an artist after prison, and he discovers that Boyle had been having an affair with his wife both before and after the wedding. Horsley had an affair with him, too, but found that Boyle was an egomaniac who didn't want to talk about anyone but himself; two's a crowd for narcissists. Having paid plenty of money for prostitutes, Horsley became one himself, with decidedly mixed results. He became surprisingly successful as a stock market investor. "Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is. Fortunately, I loved money." Of course he doesn't keep it, explaining his economizing at the end of the book: "Dry your tears - I've got all the money I'll ever need - as long as I die by 4 p.m. this afternoon." Horsley warns us at the beginning, "I've suffered for my art. Now it's your turn." There are indeed grossly disturbing episodes described here, all in jocular, jaunty style that makes this one of the most peculiar autobiographies ever, and intensely readable. "You will find nothing wrong with this autobiography," he says at the end, "except a poor choice of subject."

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "A Masterpiece of Filth", March 12, 2008

By	Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Horsley, Sebastian, "Dandy in the Underworld", Harper Perennial, 2008.

" A Masterpiece of Filth"

Amos Lassen

Brian Ferry has called Sebastian Horsely's "Dandy in the Underworld" a masterpiece of filth and that it is, Yet the filth is well written and very, very interesting. It is funny, strange and somewhat upsetting in its perversity,
The underlying idea of Horsley is to take one's lifestyle and raise it to uselessness. Horsely seems doomed from the start, His parents were both ridiculous and terrible. They abused each other, they drank, and they divorced and married other people. Because his mother fell in love with the concept of suicide, Sebastian was sent off to boarding school and there he founded a punk band and discovered drugs and sex. After he finished boarding school, he enrolled in art school, had a bad marriage and became friends with a convicted murderer. He had sex with everyone as he yearned for attention. Then there were the prostitutes on whom he says he spent one hundred pounds sterling and another one hundred thousand on crack. And heroin also enters the picture and he ended up in rehab but learns that his self-creation was little more than an act of revenge against his father.
Sebastian discovers how to become self-aware and begins to hate the body he has destroyed through drugs but always loves money because of the power that it brings. He also falls in love with himself and goes as far as to state that having a girlfriend would cause him to be unfaithful to himself.
In a strange turn of events, Horsely went to the Philippines where he was crucified and thereby became infamous in London, His crucifixion, he claims, was an artistic statement and an attempt to break the limits of life. There are few words to describe Sebastian Horsely. He was an artist and a junkie, a misogynist, a narcissist, a bon vivant and a sexual deviant. He is now nearly bankrupt having wasted his family's fortune on "pleasure" and he had a very strange life. In the style of Quentin Crisp, George Gordon, Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde, he was a "dandy".

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pretty dull, October 13, 2008

By	Mark A. Gray (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Nothing really outrageous or shocking. I wonder if most of this comes from the authors imagination, rather than an actual account of his life, to date. I don't know how anyone can draw inspiration from this guy. Almost everything is entirely self inflicted. A little rich boy that wants to hang out with the underbelly of society, purely as a self serving form of ego gratification. A little rich boy looking for kicks. The book is extremely drawn out and most of the good quotes are nicked.I very much doubt little of what is supposed to have happened actually did...the guy would have been too stoned to have remembered most of it, if it was true!
It all seems to be a cheap publicity stunt from a guy who, sadly, thinks he is shocking and outrageous....and actually isn't.
Terminal boredom!