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Start the first page and you are in the presence of an old-fashioned baroque novel, intelligent, extravagant, as photographically precise as his paintings but not so silly . . . Dalí notices everything. --P.J. Kavanagh, Guardian
So full of visual invention, so witty, so charged with an almost Dickensian energy that it's difficult not to accept its author's own arrogant valuation of himself as a genius. --George Melly
Flames positively lick from Salvador Dalí s pages. --Hilary Spurling, Harpers & Queen
So full of visual invention, so witty, so charged with an almost Dickensian energy that it's difficult not to accept its author's own arrogant valuation of himself as a genius. --George Melly
Flames positively lick from Salvador Dalí s pages. --Hilary Spurling, Harpers & Queen
Product Description
Dalí describes, in vividly visual terms, the intrigues and love affairs of a group of dazzling, eccentric aristocrats who, with their luxurious and extravagant lifestyle, symbolize the decadence of the 1930s. The story of the tangled lives of the protagonists, from the February riots of 1934 in Paris to the closing days of the Second World War, constitutes a brilliant and dramatic vehicle for Dalí s vision and reads as an epitaph of pre-war Europe
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Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
It can only be coincidence that I read this straight after The Great Weaver Of Kashmir, another novel with a sadomasochistic, almost demonic relationship between a selfish, unyielding, charmisatic ego-maniac and his lovelorn lady intent upon martrydom, self-immolation on the pyre of the anti-hero's genius. Dali's monster, the Count of Grandsailles, is just one of a series of apparently extraordinary individuals, aristocrats and society hangers-on, who flit between Paris, North Africa and America as the chaos of war moves from east to west. Bright young things mostly, living in opulence and extravagance, but each wearing a mask to disguise their inner chaos.
As you would expect, the prose is dense and descriptive, sporadically turning up another surreal conglomeration of objects into a unique and surprising hallucination; so if you're a speed reader or often guilty of driving over the illustrative paragraphs of a book, hurrying on to the next bit of action or dialogue, you'd be advised to stop - breathe - start again more slowly. I think he wrote it fast, in 1944, and you can't deny his verve, the various insights into human behaviour, not to mention the daring sensuality at the heart of this decadent, occasionally moving, charade.
I don't know that Hidden Faces has ever been filmed or made into a mini-series but I think an adaptation would be more appealing. Guillermo del Toro would be my choice to direct.
As you would expect, the prose is dense and descriptive, sporadically turning up another surreal conglomeration of objects into a unique and surprising hallucination; so if you're a speed reader or often guilty of driving over the illustrative paragraphs of a book, hurrying on to the next bit of action or dialogue, you'd be advised to stop - breathe - start again more slowly. I think he wrote it fast, in 1944, and you can't deny his verve, the various insights into human behaviour, not to mention the daring sensuality at the heart of this decadent, occasionally moving, charade.
I don't know that Hidden Faces has ever been filmed or made into a mini-series but I think an adaptation would be more appealing. Guillermo del Toro would be my choice to direct.
She was the praying mantis that devours its love through a biological need for the absolute'.
9 Sep 2011
Format:Paperback
Dali's Hidden Faces is an epic tale of aristocratic love. From the off, readers might think the style is similar to Balzac or even Proust. There is a seductive romanticism to the prose and the tiny details seem to accumulate by themselves. But here the similarities seem to wither pretty quickly. The style Dali has chosen is visceral, dynamic and lush with brilliant descriptions. Dali's painting are of course visual, even photographic, and his writing is capable of evoking similar intensity: colours and textures are always given pride of place in passages which makes for building up a montage of details and fascinating aspects.
I think the cloest thing I could compare this unique mix of ingredients would be Brunel's film The Exterminating Angel - a compot of aristoratic hubris, fragile humanity and some really surreal happenings. There is a particular passage which works especially well and seems to favour Dali's peculiar and passionate taste for transfer and juxtaposition: `Look my dear count, said Giradin, pointing with his pale writer's fingers to the undulated and broken protuberances of the loaf, `if that isn't the very configuration of our crusty and golden hills of Libreux, of the gentle slopes, the deep ravines in which cascades of fresh onions flow, for it is those thin, snake-like and shiny slices that represent the hard opalescent tension of our swift streams, with their silvery foam, as they break away from the snows piled up at the far end of the bowl... the grains of rye lying prone and baked into the crust represent the ruminating attitude of motionless and meditative cattle, while the brilliant salt crystals sprinkled over the illuminated heights in turn represent the windows of the distant villages sparkling in the late afternoon sun. There, by chance, is a large grain of salt clinging solitary and lustreless to a steep bank: that's the white-washed Saint Julien hermitage; and there is more. Look, my dear count, the little pieces of pepper, ground somewhat irregularly, slightly elongated - some even look as if they had heads - they walk, they are our peasants, dressed in black...'. Essentially, every mundane event in this topsy-turvy world is an opportunity for Dali the magician to inject some fire, some dazzling original imagery and dark humour which really work well together. I imagine that if Hitchcock wrote a novel, it might not be unlike this!
I think most readers will care less for the plot than the minute and beguiling details which really make this book a fascinating document of sublime skill transfered to a new field. How convincing the reader will find the work as whole might vary depending upon expectations.
I think the cloest thing I could compare this unique mix of ingredients would be Brunel's film The Exterminating Angel - a compot of aristoratic hubris, fragile humanity and some really surreal happenings. There is a particular passage which works especially well and seems to favour Dali's peculiar and passionate taste for transfer and juxtaposition: `Look my dear count, said Giradin, pointing with his pale writer's fingers to the undulated and broken protuberances of the loaf, `if that isn't the very configuration of our crusty and golden hills of Libreux, of the gentle slopes, the deep ravines in which cascades of fresh onions flow, for it is those thin, snake-like and shiny slices that represent the hard opalescent tension of our swift streams, with their silvery foam, as they break away from the snows piled up at the far end of the bowl... the grains of rye lying prone and baked into the crust represent the ruminating attitude of motionless and meditative cattle, while the brilliant salt crystals sprinkled over the illuminated heights in turn represent the windows of the distant villages sparkling in the late afternoon sun. There, by chance, is a large grain of salt clinging solitary and lustreless to a steep bank: that's the white-washed Saint Julien hermitage; and there is more. Look, my dear count, the little pieces of pepper, ground somewhat irregularly, slightly elongated - some even look as if they had heads - they walk, they are our peasants, dressed in black...'. Essentially, every mundane event in this topsy-turvy world is an opportunity for Dali the magician to inject some fire, some dazzling original imagery and dark humour which really work well together. I imagine that if Hitchcock wrote a novel, it might not be unlike this!
I think most readers will care less for the plot than the minute and beguiling details which really make this book a fascinating document of sublime skill transfered to a new field. How convincing the reader will find the work as whole might vary depending upon expectations.
5 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
It's not that they went away but the name "Clan" is again being used. "Hidden Faces" is a come back to their sound when they were at 4AD. You can hear PING PONG all over the cd! Roony Moorings is as always creative. This is one of my many favourite Xymox release. "Sing a Song" "Special Friends" "Out of the Rain" "Piano Piece" "THe Child in Me" and "Going Round 97" are just romantically beautiful.
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