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Porcelain: A Memoir by [Moby]

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Porcelain: A Memoir Kindle Edition

4.4 out of 5 stars 405 ratings

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A lovingly composed new memoir that tracks his journey from living in an abandoned factory in Connecticut to playing the hottest clubs in New York and Europe. …Porcelain reads like an intimate meditation on the various contradictions Moby has resolved over the course of his 50 years: his Christian faith vs. his hedonistic streak; his hunger for stardom vs. his retiring nature; his respect for ambition vs. his deep belief in luck. The book is also a tender ode to a vanished New York City.”—Los Angeles Times
 
 “As much a portrait of downtown Manhattan in the late ‘80s and ‘90s as it is an iconoclastic artist’s coming-of-age story, this raucous, candid memoir will fascinate the electronic musician’s many fans.”—
People

Porcelain vividly evokes a certain place and time—specifically, New York in the ’90s. It simultaneously presents a portrait of its author that’s withering in the extreme. At the same time, it offers a perfect freeze-frame of downtown New York in the Dinkins to early Giuliani years, when far more of the cherished stench of ’70s and ’80s city lingered than some may remember.”—New York Observer

“Riveting.”—
Rolling Stone

“Rock memoirs rarely live up to expectations, but…
Porcelain is an exception. It ranks with Kim Gordon's Girl in a Band and a handful of others in recent years as a particularly incisive look at not just a life in music, but at the cultural and social circumstances that helped shape it. It is by turns self-deprecating, hilarious and moving.”—Chicago Tribune

“Moby’s
Porcelain is a buoyant coming-of-age story set in the filthy, dangerous New York City of the 1990s that the musician and DJ adored. Funny, bighearted and raw.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Entertainingly gritty… A distinctive addition to the recent spate of well-written memoirs by contemporary musicians, a list that would include the likes of Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, and Carrie Brownstein.”—
Kirkus Reviews

“A love letter to chaotic 1990s New York…Moby’s prose is honest, self-deprecating, and full of mordant wit, and when music is playing, it shines with exhilarating emotion.”
 —Publishers Weekly, starred

“Ten years of Moby’s life, mostly in the decrepit, dangerous, much-loved New York City of the 1990s, a life comically overcrowded,  filthy, alcohol-fuelled, vegan, unbelievably noisy, full of spit and semen and some sort of Christianity; and often, suddenly, moving. The writing is terrific, enlivened by a bewildered deadpan humor that makes crazy sense of it all. His ancestor Herman Melville would, I think, be simultaneously revolted and proud.”
Salman Rushdie

“Full disclosure: Moby is a friend of mine, yet I had no idea that he was such a brilliant writer and storyteller.
Porcelain, to me, is a classic and beautifully told bildungsroman—a young man comes to the city to find himself. And Moby tells this tale of his youth—his search for meaning and music—with gorgeous clarity, comedy, and compassion. Porcelain also serves as a history of downtown New York of a certain time, a New York that doesn't really exist anymore, but I was very happy to reencounter it here through Moby's particular and fascinating lens.” —Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir!

“This is one of the funniest and most accessible books you'll ever read about an erstwhile Christian/alcoholic vegan electronic music maker. Throughout the adventures and misadventures, Danish music festivals and Barbadan disasters, Moby manages to stay wide-eyed, grateful and amazed, which itself is a real gift to the reader: we feel welcome in—or just as out of place as he feels—in the world of rock and raves and clubs. He remakes the music world into the form it should be: nonexclusive, unpretentious, less about division and stratification, and more about radical inclusion. Music shouldn't exist any other way.”
Dave Eggers
 
“Raw, honest, cruel and funny, Moby's beautifully-written memoir is a pure act of bravery. He allows us to ride on his shoulder as he chases a dream through New York nightlife and the European club scene, his self-deprecating humor and unguarded nature lulling us into believing the ride will be breezy and the landing soft. Only when he starts plummeting to earth do we realize that we’ve left his shoulder and climbed into his head, where self-deprecation reveals itself as self-loathing that is chasing self-destruction. It’s a dark place with jagged edges—not the spot to ride out this kind of fall, and Moby hides not one shard of it from us. But, in perhaps in an even greater act of bravery, he also never hides behind cynicism, or distances himself from the hope, and even innocence, of his dreams. I wish my writing could be even half as honest.”
Paul Haggis
 
“Honest, funny, and sometimes raw, Porcelain is an intimate look at a life in motion. It proves that Moby writes like he plays music–with passion and precision and heart.”
Susan Orlean

About the Author

Moby is a singer-songwriter, musician, DJ, and photographer. His records have sold 20 million records worldwide. AllMusic called him "one of the most important dance music figures of the early '90s." He lives in Los Angeles. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B014QKIDIA
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books (May 17, 2016)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 17, 2016
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 27020 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 408 pages
  • Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 405 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
405 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2018
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4.0 out of 5 stars A brooding and unflinching account of a pivotal decade in Moby's life.
Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2018
"With reluctance, I agreed. To be descended from Herman Melville and not try to write my own memoir would seem like a bit of a hereditary affront."

Before launching the editor to write up this review, I checked my iTunes library and discovered that I have seven and a half hours of Moby's songs on my laptop, some of which have been played hundreds of times. As an avid listener for nearly two decades now, however, I knew precious little about the musician himself.

I didn't know he grew up dirt poor and lived for several years out of an abandoned factory in Stamford, Connecticut with not much more to his name than some assembled DJ equipment and an electric hot plate. I didn't know that he wrestled for most of his life over what it means to be a Christian and whether he was one. I didn't know he released a punk rock album in 1996 that nearly crashed his career. Nor was I aware that he once had a full head of hair and that his losing it, along with the ebb and flow of his early musical career, persistently plagued his wavering self-image.

Now I had learned that he declined the usual route of handing your story to a ghostwriter and instead chose to go it alone, earning himself a glowing blurb from none other than Salman Rushdie in the process.

This 2016 memoir-cum-bildungsroman covers what I take to be the most pivotal decade of Moby's life (1989-99). It precedes his meteoric rise ushered in with the release of Play, and it was during this interval that a young, David Lynch-obsessed artist living in squalor and struggling to make ends meet put his hopeful ambition to the test. This is Moby at his most raw, the literary counterpart to the brooding lyrics and emotional vulnerability echoed throughout his diverse catalog. His anxieties, frustrations, and patient reflections are all on full display, enabling a clearer image of the life and mind behind such masterpieces as "Honey," "Flower," and "Go."

Today Richard Melville Hall—a patronym completely usurped by his familiar stage handle—is uncontroversially regarded on both sides of the pond as among the world's most influential electronic musicians. But reaching such a high point of acclaim and notoriety was hardly preordained, even for one as talented as Moby. Sure, he rubbed elbows with Dream Frequency, 808 State, Underground Resistance, and other toplining acts in the thriving 90s rave scene, and later cut his teeth on international tours with the likes of Soundgarden, The Prodigy, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, but his ultimate status as an industry icon was never a guarantee.

The transition from quasi-homeless youth with sporadic access to running water to leading DJ for a new nightclub in the heart of Manhattan is a fascinating story in and of itself. When he caught wind of a club soon to open in the Meatpacking District, Moby scraped together the fare to make the trip from his ascetic abode in Connecticut to the anarchic streets of NYC. He waited in the long line of job-seekers, only to learn that busboys, bouncers, and bartenders were being hired, not DJs. He awkwardly left his mixtape with the staff anyway. One day later, he received the call that would change his life forever.

In Gotham's rave scene circa the late 80s and early 90s, Moby was as much of an outlier as ever. Electronic music was still underground, and nightclubs of the era featured dancefloors populated almost solely by African Americans, Latinos, and LGBTs. Moby was none of the above. But it was here that he felt most at home, more so than with his Christian friends and at the faith-filled weekend retreats he found himself attending with his on-and-off girlfriend. The self-seeking judgment and mounting internal guilt that so engulfed his religious existence outside the club all but evaporated whilst spinning dancehall records for vibrant non-white crowds until the sun came up.

It's no secret that the scent of nostalgia combined with the distance of time can cause one to idealize a complicated past. Moby attests to the dangers of living in New York City in 1989. Ravaged by AIDS and crack and gang violence, the city was infamous for the highest murder rate per capita in the country, with "teenagers running through Times Square and stabbing tourists with infected syringes," ran one story in the Post, where "kids routinely walked through the [subway] cars stabbing people and stealing their watches and wallets and chains and sneakers." Nevertheless, for Moby SoHo, with its quiet lofts and art galleries, was home, part of "a perfect city"—and where DJ genius was born.

Perhaps the least surprising pivot in the book concerns his fraught relationship with alcohol and promiscuity, which marked a shift from his deacadeslong spree as a straight-edge, teetotaling animal rights activist. He never drops the veganism, of course, but as with any musical celebrity you can care to name, Moby battled with alcoholism over the years and liberally pursued a wanton sex life. He is straightforward and honest about this, never one to make excuses, even as he describes a series of bleak events in his life such as the loss of his mother and the looming dread that his career as a musician might be over.

Moby never renounces his Christian faith outright in his memoir. He does, however, recount his evolving views on religion and belief in God. Growing up in youth group, he vents often about a felt incompatibility between the actions of his fellow Christians on the one hand and living what he believed to be a truly ethical life on the other—one committed to lessening the suffering of others, both of the human and nonhuman variety. He notes that reading Sartre and Camus and exposure to existentialist philosophy in college helped undermine his confidence in theistic traditions. At one point he describes a particularly resonant moment of satori in which the final vestiges of his Judeo-Christian worldview seem to slip away, replaced by a humble sublimity that acknowledges human ignorance in the face of cosmic complexity.

Closing Thoughts

Moby's music has always carried with it a spark of inspiration, uniquely capable of catering to just the right mood for almost any occasion. Indeed, he's the only artist I know of whose melodies can calm as effortlessly as they can energize. Though genres and tastes evolve, his recordings, both the more ambient soundscapes as well as the pulsating dance rhythms designed to be played at deafening volumes, have remained relevant through it all. His recent memoir, by turns glum and joyous, provides an unflinching look at Moby's life as an aspiring musician navigating the bedlam of the Big Apple in the 1990s and the thought processes and influences that fed into his work.

For me his origin story raised a number of intriguing questions related to determinism versus chance—namely whether Moby's success was shaped my random encounters, or whether musicians of his caliber and in possession of his talents were always destined for greatness at the outset. (I'd be curious to hear other's thoughts on this question.) But in the end, Porcelain is a brooding, anxious, frequently insightful memoir that commemorates an intimate period in the life of a brilliant artist whose timeless music continues to inspire generations of fans around the world.
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Shay Leon
5.0 out of 5 stars LOVE IT!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 6, 2016
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Debbie W.
5.0 out of 5 stars Wow! What a read!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 23, 2022
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Jespydoodles
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 30, 2018
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Mafa Kinedurtz
5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful work from the master of dance, trance, ambient, rock and every genre. A fantastic read.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2017
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MR Paul Dobbs
3.0 out of 5 stars Ok ish...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 19, 2019
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