Customer Reviews

Diary of a Genius

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Dali is an insane being. However, if you like to be stimulated then this is the best book to do the job.I found Diary of a genius to be an "out-there" kinda book. I absoultely adored it. Between Dali's interrestings ideas he kept you laughing. A must read for the half insane.

the great dali offers a glimpse of the workings of his twisted mind with chapters dedicated to subjects such as: the universe as a four-buttock continum, over 100 uses for a whale bone and how he turned into a fish. a must read for pure laughter and looney inspiration.

Supposedly, some small corner of the mind tosses its dice continuously, trying every combination of fact against every other. Next some filter removes the nonsense - most of it - and lets through a few drops of insight. In some few minds, a droplet or two more forms steady trickle of meaningful creativity.

In Dalí, the floodgates had opened. Every experience, even seeing a hotel bellboy, spilling some coffee, or flatulence, had mystic and mythic meaning for him. Read just a few of his words, and you know that you can't just read his words. Ideas swirled around him in chaotic orbits, like his beloved flies. His writing makes me think of a show of fireworks, which an author tries to describe by tracing a few dozen especially brilliant sparks.

Three things stand out as invariant across Dalí's life, as he tells it. The second is Gala, his wife, muse, agent, and tour-guide to planet earth. The third is enthusiasm for everything, a degree of involvement with his world that permeates his vision and hearing, but also his senses of smell, touch, and all things of the body. That level of everyday intensity would stun most people in just minutes, and probably kill some.

The first point in Dalí's world is, of course, Dalí. I can not describe Dalí on Dalí, you must experience that first-hand.

//wiredweird

Egocentric, insightful, humorous, scatalogical, artistic, poetic, profound, intense,surreal, beautiful, philosophical insanity!

`Diary of a Genius' is an honest and real study of the world's most acclaimed surrealist painter. Rich in imagery, Dali reveals the canvas of his life with candour, colour and masterful composition. Shadows of self-doubt are subtly juxtaposed beside his brilliant self-awareness, and his reflections are a fusion of form and feeling. Many of the entries are poignant, highlighting the painter's melancholic marriage to mortality towards the end of his life. In his final days, he sought neither separation nor divorce from it, accepting the inevitability that the brush strokes of his being would flourish for only a brief period more. Perhaps the most significant entry revealing Dali's resignation is that appearing on page 136:

`Cordoba - June19 1986

Had lunch today in a fish café on the Plaza del Potro. Table for one. Told the waiter that I had a young man's vision clouded by an old man's eyes. He told me to get glasses. I told him to get stuffed olives. The fish tasted like horse. I was disappointed because it usually tasted like camel. When the bill arrived, I realised I had no money so in lieu of cash I presented a napkin sketch entitled `Apparition of Ungarnished Paella Being Mocked by Pablo Casals on Beach'. The waiter gave me an inferior Picasso self-portrait on drink coaster in lieu of the change.

I no longer feel at home with human beings so I think I'll move to New York.'

This remarkable book is a work of genius about a genius' work

Hilarious and captivating!
A rollercoaster ride that twists and turns through the mind of Dali offering cohesive dialogue and thoughts blended with undecipherable rants and hallucinations. This book gives the reader an intimate view of an artistic genius through the eyes and actions of Dali. He walks a thin line between genius and madman, mostly the latter. If it were not for his beloved wife Gala there would be no doubt in my mind that he ever would have become anything close to a genius. Gala gave Dali order, anchored him in the real world and created the force behind his paintings.

Dali was definitely the master of creating hype. No matter what he was doing, there would be scandal, controversy and snobbery, as he refers to it. Dali created spectacle from his home in Port Lligat, Spain to his frequent travels to New York and Paris. He was loved by those he reviled and despised by those people he loved primarily Picasso and his own father. Obsessed with bowl movements, buttocks and rhinoceros horns Dali often relied on these images to create the meaning behind his works.

By far one of the best speakers, Dali manipulated his audiences into accepting his approach and ideology on Surrealist art and artists. The media even listened and published numerous articles in newspapers and magazines on the happenings of his life's art. Often playing both sides of a situation, disagreement or battle, he always comes out on top still remaining allies with all parties involved.

I would recommend taking the two or three nights it would take to read this book and jump into the mind of this Surrealist genius/madman, Dali. If you hold on to the end you will experience the revered irrational mindset of this artisan and forever hold a new understanding of Dali's revolutionary ideas and works.

This is a far cry from the inspired, megalomaniacal lyricism of 'The Secret Life' (flip through the passages on America, which rival Apollinaire in their infectiously effusive enthusiasm). Instead, what we have here is an 'anecdotic' (Dalian neologism), haphazard pasti...che of pseudo-Jarryian slapstick, right-wing posturing and pointless self-aggrandizement. The sole redeeming section of the book, which speaks about Dali's relationship with Rene Crevel, is, as one might expect, refracted through Dali's emotional evasiveness and dissimulation. The rest of this book, it has to be said, is flimsy and insubstantial.

Also of marginal interest are his rather fragmentary notes on his rupture with the Surrealists- again, as with his intimations on Lorca and Crevel, one discerns between the lines a muted admiration for Breton that persisted throughout Dali's life, suggesting the ambivalence and guilt that Dali felt toward the Surrealist movement following his expulsion. I believe this gives the lie to Dali's repeated insistence that Surrealism was an asphyxiating straitjacket that he outgrew over time. It is perhaps tragic that we learn very little about other people in Dali's scribblings, so inexorable is his need to reduce others to being mere signposts punctuating his interminable pilgrimage toward genius. What results is a solipsistic slew of hackneyed jokes, an endless gag reel with canned laughter.

'Diary of a Genius' by Salvador Dali is a fascinating way to experience and be apart of Dali's inter-working mind. This book took me out of my own head and placed me in Dali's world. In his world it shows everything from how and why he paints to the pure essence of his emotions and bodily functions. Throughout his book it explains about the process of his paintings from what techniques he tried and some of the struggles he had while perfecting his paintings.

In his Diary he is able to demonstrate the parts of his life that make him so interesting to read about. It is not about his achievements as a whole, but rather how he got there and what he put himself through to achieve what he wanted. I could not put the book down because I could not wait to find out what unexpected crazy thing he would do or talk about doing next. He surprised me many times throughout the book with his wild adventures of rotten fish, his interest in his saliva, his obsession with animal bones, and his ideas of his film script 'The Flesh Wheelbarrow'.

When looking in to Dali's life, from his filtered point of view, it really shows how he wanted to be seen and how he thought of himself. If you enjoy his paintings and want to know what went through his head when he made them plus more this is the book for you.

From 1952 to 1963, Salvador Dali kept a journal, a diary of his thoughts, creative reasoning's, and mindful tangents. In a matter of several hours and 186 pages, I feel as if I have delved far into the mind of a man whose entire life is either nonsense blathering of the brain or philosophical wonders reaching far beyond my own capacities of comprehension. While Diary of a Genius did not keep me in suspense, give me nightmares or have me in tears, the book did touch a part of my brain that doesn't get triggered very often, let alone four hours straight.
Dali writes daily entries into his diary discussing off-the-wall realizations, urges, drives, and adorations. One of the most interesting aspects of the book was to read the very intimate words of one of the most renowned surrealist painters in the world. Dali talks of his process in working on many pieces in a day-by-day account of his struggles and conquests in painting. He is fueled mainly by his love for his wife Gala, but also by the incisive apprehension and dissection of oddities accumulating in his head. He talks of his bowel movements, his intrigue in Hitler, his subconscious representation of rhinoceros horns, and his love of elephant skulls in the summer.
Diary of a Genius was, in short, an interesting read that kept me entertained for a short period of time. I am much more knowledgeable of Dali himself and will look at his work now with a new understanding of the peculiar man behind the brush. I would definitely recommend this book to any psychology student looking to analyze the intricate workings of a madman's ways and fantasies of the mind. I would also recommend this book to any fan of Salvador Dali, surrealism, or art in general. I would suggest, and I believe that Dali would agree with me, that this book be read while sitting on the toilet.

If you have the patience and time to focus on all the wacky details that Salvador Dali has written, then this book will be an interesting and entertaining. For me, half of the overdramatic description is annoying and I really don't have an interest in reading. The best part of the book is what was left out as Dali's "Secret Life." With all the respect and love for Gala that Dali shows it makes me wonder if the secret life of his betrays Gala. There are anecdotes of wisdom, philosophy, and examples of pointless behavior, and somewhere in the words it's possible for anyone to relate to or share in a similar experience. Dali on the other hand you might think is just more warped than most. For example he writes about the intensity of kissing a loved one (Gala) in this way: "On awakening I kiss Gala's ear to feel with the tip of my tongue the thickness of the minuscule moulding on the lobe. At that moment I feel, all mixed in with my saliva, Picasso. Picasso, who is the most vital man I have ever known and who posses a birth mark on the lobe of his left ear." He tries to explain so many associations connecting his past to his family to the present to his feelings and his own thought. His mind must have always been racing to find meaning in absolutely everything encountered. That is what makes the Diary of a Genius a piece of work. It was fairly easy to read but exhausting at the same time because I felt exhausted for him. I guess there is no rest for the wicked ONE.