Benefit of Clergy – some Notes on Salvador Dali by George Orwell is the nineteenth of The Essays that are placed on the 917th spot on The Greatest Books of All Time site, where the algorithm changes the hierarchy, who knows what the data used is, but if it takes into account the ‘reading public’, then the chefs d’oeuvre will descend, and the likes of The Da Vinci Code will dominate the arena, and they will become the GOAT – you have more than five thousand reviews on books from the aforementioned site and others, with notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists waiting for you on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

Benefit of Clergy – some Notes on Salvador Dali by George Orwell is the nineteenth of The Essays that are placed on the 917th spot on The Greatest Books of All Time site, where the algorithm changes the hierarchy, who knows what the data used is, but if it takes into account the ‘reading public’, then the chefs d’oeuvre will descend, and the likes of The Da Vinci Code will dominate the arena, and they will become the GOAT – you have more than five thousand reviews on books from the aforementioned site and others, with notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists waiting for you on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

 

9 out of 10

‘Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats’

This sounds like one of the famous, classic lines “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The first line in Pride and Prejudice https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/12/pride-and-prejudice-by-jane-austen-12.html as known as the start of Anna Karenina

 

‘Some of the incidents in it are flatly incredible, others have been rearranged and romanticized, and not merely the humiliation but the persistent ordinariness of everyday life has been cut out. Dali is even by his own diagnosis narcissistic, and his autobiography is simply a strip-tease act conducted in pink limelight. But as a record of fantasy, of the perversion of instinct that has been made possible by the machine age, it has great value.’

Like the other essays https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/08/why-i-write-by-george-orwell-is-first.html this one is a mesmerizing Xray and says exactly what we need to know, indeed, I have started reading the autobiography of Dali, such a flamboyant figure, what with his moustaches and everything else

 

I have stopped though, after a few pages, he went on about himself, how divine he is – he probably, surely did not say that, but that was the feeling I was left with – and we reach the…toilet, where he has to defecate, and then follows the description of his feces, which have no smell, he is a demi, or maybe a full god

Geroge Orwell writes about the violence: ‘Several other incidents of the same kind are recorded, including (this was when he was twenty-nine years old) knocking down and trampling on a girl ‘until they had to tear her, bleeding, out of my reach.’ And this is so vile, albeit in the circumstances, they tolerate somehow his aberrations

 

Intellectuals https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/intellectuals-by-paul-johnson.html is a fantastic book by Paul Johnson (I am reading his History of Christianity now) and we get from here that Leo Tolstoy, Erenest Hemingway, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Jacques Rousseau and others have been quite frightening, even abominable as humans

Thus, Dali may fit the profile of the gifted individual, who is a great artist, but not a good friend – the impression we have from reading the essay about his is that he was quite repulsive ‘When he is about five, he gets hold of a wounded bat which he puts into a tin pail. Next morning he finds that the bat is almost dead and is covered with ants which are devouring it. He puts it in his mouth, ants and all, and bites it almost in half.’

 

Dali has a five-year plan involving a poor girl, he torments her, kissing and fondling her, only to stop, telling her he will abandon her, and he does that and the conclusion is devastating: ‘But neither ought one to pretend, in the name of ‘detachment’, that such pictures as ‘Mannequin rotting in a taxicab’ are morally neutral. They are diseased and disgusting, and any investigation ought to start out from that fact.’ Critics would disagree, but I am (almost) convinced

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’