A few years ago I read a life of Baudelaire and was most disappointed. The delinquent poet had to spend most of his time writing begging letters before he could squander any money they brought forth. There is no such problem for Sebastian Horsley who had plenty of money to get through without having to worry where it had come from.
His account of his life up to his early forties starts in brilliantly witty form. An aunt lives to the age of 82 and then dies 'of embroidery'; his histrionic mother is the star of the first chapters, and 'Well, Jazz has a bad name because it's crap and boring you know' makes her the most astute jazz critic of all. Every page has a set piece of high camp wisdom and it looks like it's going to be an enjoyable 300 page romp.
Unfortunately it gets darker and not only because the action moves to Scotland and gets married. You're not likely to read a cheerful memoir by a heroin addict but Sebastian has self-lacerating ennui to perfection and every facet of debauchery is explored in gory detail. Not many of the most unnerving of these can be repeated here. But if Baudelaire was a bore with a big talent for writing, Sebastian is a great raconteur and genuinely nice bloke with apparently no talent but that for self-advertisement. He does run out of money in the end and is still musing on suicide a few years before his recent death, but mainly, one supposes, as a theme in his life-as-art performance. For one so superficial and cynical, he is a genuine and honest purveyor of inverted wisdom, apparently self-obessed but selfless, too.
His devotion to his wayward calling was all but complete with prostitutes, crucifixions and friends in low places. His final passing was inevitable, it would seem, leaving the beautiful corpse, the sanctified and demonized reputation and this guide book to the degradation that passeth all understanding.
Depravity is the soul of wit.
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