Porcelain

Starred review from February 15, 2016
The gazillion record–selling techno rocker recalls 10 alternately absurd and rapturous years breaking into the music biz in this exuberant memoir. Beginning in 1989, when he was squatting in an abandoned factory sending demo tapes into the void, and ending with his 1999 breakout hit, Play, Moby recounts his ascent through deejay gigs at New York dance clubs, where he achieved middling success with his electronic anthems for the rave scene. It’s a story of crummy apartments, psychotic roommates, and no money—the book is a love letter to chaotic 1990s New York—and then of uninhabitable hotel rooms, muddy outdoor festivals, and stages hung with bloody goats’ heads. Moby, a Christian, vegan, and teetotaller, is a monkish anomaly at the party, and though there are episodes of excess—spinning at a swingers’ party; his own stab at public sex—his outsider status makes him a keen, clear-headed, and very funny observer of fleshpots. When he starts drinking heavily and consorting with strippers, he treats the turn neither as liberation nor descent, but as a new chapter that generates both regrets and insights. Moby’s prose is honest, self-deprecating, and full of mordant wit, and when music is playing—“My ears rang with the sound of ten thousand ravers in a field at dawn”—it shines with exhilarating emotion. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Literary.