The Persistence of Memory: A Biography of Dali

Piercing the flamboyant persona of a self-mythologizing artist, this lively, gossipy, well-researched biography of Salvador Dali lays bare the demons that fed his paranoia and fueled his art. Dali was given the identical name of a baby brother who had died nine months before his birth in 1904. According to Etherington-Smith, editor of Christie's International Magazine , Dali carried a lifelong burden of guilt at having ``stolen'' his elder brother's existence. Shattered by his adored mother's death when he was 17, the Spanish painter craved fame because he needed to prove himself to his father, a bullying notary, reports the author. She maintains that Dali (1904-1989) had homosexual desires but was terrified of being physically touched and probably shied away from a sexual relationship with demanding, possessive poet Federico Garcia Lorca. Dali's marriage to Gala (born Helena Diakonoff) is convincingly presented here as a relationship of mutual, morbid dependence. This biography candidly confronts the darker facets of Dali's life, such as his right-wing politics, his allegiance to Franco in the Spanish Civil War, his masochism, phobias, manipulativeness and frenzied autoeroticism. Photos. (Nov.)