"in search of the pleasure palace" von Marc Almond

[Geronimo]

"'In Search of the Pleasure Palace' is Marc Almond's quest for meaning in life now that he is in the Indian summer of his career. In this rollercoaster journey, Marc goes in pursuit of the thrills, spills and bellyaches that made each day of his youth memorable and created an image of him that was decadent, outrageous and worryingly misunderstood.

Almond's vivid and often wittily acerbic pen candidly records insights about his thoughts, the nature of being who he is, his often bizarre lifestyle and the places he visits as he attempts to navigate a course through mid-life. From swingers' nights in Croydon to the lost haunts of Barcelona, from Russia's surreal underbelly to the pre-Giuliani clean-up of New York, Marc is your observant guide to a world he was once part of and few of us have access to - through fantastic, wry anecdote."

Aus dem Klappentext


"In search of the pleasure palace" mit dem Untertitel "disreputable travels" ist nach seiner Autobiographie "Tainted Life" Marc Almond's zweites Buch. Wie schon in seiner Autobiographie gelingt es ihm mit seiner sehr lebendigen Sprache mühelos, den Leser zu fesseln und zu begeistern, und es macht Spaß, ihm in seine Erinnerungen und auf seine Reisen zu folgen. Seine Sicht der Städte London, New York, Barcelona, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Rom, Moskau, St. Petersburg, Las Vegas, Los Angeles und Mexico City ist anders, faszinierend anders als das, was man normalerweise sieht, wenn man an diese Städte denkt.

"LA is a cruel town. I've experienced it first hand. Yesterday counts for nothing. It is where you are today that matters, and you're either on your way up, at the top, or you're just nowhere, a nobody that counts for nothing.
Everyone who settles in this city does so because they want to live the dream, otherwise you wouldn't be there. It is that simple.
The pressure to succeed and stay at the top is what drives everyone. It is this naked ambition that makes people disregard much of what we consider important values in life. Traits such as ruthlessness and callousness are acceptable, a necessary part of the process that is succeeding - it really doesn't matter who you screw, who you fuck over, whether you manipulate, lie or cheat: so long as you get to the top no one cares how you got there, what you did to get there (so long as you're not found out) or what you do to stay there.
Like I said, the question on everyone's lips is, 'What can you do for me?'
And that is why so much goes horribly wrong for so many, why there is so much craziness. It is this dark side of the city's psyche that obscures the light, and that is why I'm fascinated but ill at ease with it.
It is a car accident of a town."

Darüber hinaus begegnen wir in Marc's Buch schillernden Gestalten wie Anita Sarko, Dita von Teese und erfahren nebenbei alles über die Reunion von Soft Cell, die ganz anders verlief als geplant. Ich konnte das Buch erst aus der Hand legen, als ich damit durch war, und ich wette, euch wird es nicht viel anders gehen.