Directory of Lost Causes

I'm actually pretty busy at the moment. I'm sure people won't believe me when I say that, if for no other reasons than 1) I still post entries here and 2) I don't mention in those entries much of what is happening in my actual life, so that people may form the impression that nothing is happening at all.



Well, things are happening. Or, at least, things are keeping me busy. Some people see that as a good thing. "Keeping busy? Good. Good." And so, often, misunderstandings occur if people ask how I've been, and I say, "Busy." I seem to be someone who, perhaps for physiological reasons, needs an extraordinary amount of time for private reflection, and what some might call 'wool-gathering'. I am a kind of cetaceous marine mammal to whom such reflection is air.



I'm getting off the track a bit. This post is meant as another kind of 'busy-back-soon' note on the door. Which is not to say I won't be in here from time to time, just that, well, I might not respond as soon or as expansively as I would like to communications and comments. I mean, you take all this for granted, anyway, don't you? I'm the only one who actually thinks I have to tell you this, aren't I?

Anyway, although I'm quite far from being a workaholic, I think my being busy at the current time is symptomatic of good things rather than soul-crushing things. I shall not say what those things are now. If, by any remote chance, anyone should be curious, then I'm sure those things will come out in the course of time, barring disasters, such as a sudden and unexpected attack of death, or something.

But to get down to business, as the title of this blog entry suggests, there are various things I wanted to post here by way of news and diversion and general bloggishness to give readers a reasonably pleasant 'watch this space' kind of feeling.



First of all, news, or should I say, vague rumour: All indications are that Shrike is progressing towards its release. I do not know the exact release date, but will let the details be known when I can.

Secondly, Mr Wu kindly made me aware that Mishima Yukio's short film, Yuukoku, or, Rite of Love and Death, has now been released on DVD, and may even be viewed online. I have taken the latter option, and it is, indeed, a jean-creaming piece of heavy, full-on art. Bowie tried doing the whole Renaissance man bit, but has mainly failed to convince outside the arena of music (though I'm very fond of The Man Who Fell to Earth), and I can't think of many other modern artists (popular or otherwise) who have even made much of an attempt, let alone succeeded. Mishima was bona fide.

Thirdly, oh, I seem to have forgotten. I felt sure there was something else. Oh yeah, I'm going to see Leonard Cohen on Saturday. That's at least one more thing I wanted to say, and if my busyness will at all permit it, I might report back here.



There might have been something else, too, but I've forgotten.

The Next Day...

I knew I'd forgotten something. I posted a link to it before in the comments section, but thought I should post a 'main page' link, too. A while back on Chomu I put up an essay I wrote called 'Useful Parasites'. I wrote it with a particular magazine in mind, but, perhaps appropriately, it was rejected. I'm really very (figuratively) footsore from peddling my wares to publishers who keep one waiting - sometimes for years - only to say 'no', so I put it up on Chomu immediately it was rejected. Since then, on Chomu, there has also been a piece by Brent Peterson, and it's good to see our little stable of writers gradually widening, though it's a shame that so far it is full of stallions, with no mares, except nightmares.

I realise Chomu is a bit irregular, in more ways than one, but would like to encourage people to keep checking back, as we are putting up new things in fits and starts, and don't always makes announcements. There are at least four 'serial' pieces that will be continued (I sincerely hope) at some point, too, namely, 33 Ways of Winning at Life, Who Would Have Thought that a Girl Like Me Would Double as a Superstar?, Scramble City and The Dream Cycle, and if that doesn't keep you occupied until I can fully retutn my attention to this blog, I don't know what will. Incidentally, I am also hoping to serialise my temporarily shelved novel of invertebrate ambition and excess, The Sex Life of Worms, on Chomu at some point. I've honestly got quite a lot on.

I am back in Wales.



I've also just discovered this, a great piece by the artist Vincent Chong, which, according to his website, is destined for my forthcoming novella, Shrike. The strange thing is, a piece of cover art, from the same artist, already exists. But maybe this is for the back cover, or something. Even then, there is a photograph that I believe is earmarked for the back. I'm rather impatient to see the finished item now to discover how it's all going to work together.

By the way, for those who have pre-ordered copies of the novella, thank you, and my apologies for the fact that its publication appears to have been delayed. I'd like to be able to promise to have something out in the meantime for you to enjoy, but I simply haven't acheived the status yet where I can guarantee that a publisher or editor will even read something new I've written, let alone publish it. I do tend to feel, with each thing written and published, that I'm basically back to square one; I don't yet get the sense of things 'snowballing', I'm afraid.

I've been reflecting on this a lot recently.

I'm glad to have had the supporters I have, in terms of publishers and readers, but have to say that I don't yet really feel understood by more than a handful of people, and this is frustrating. It's also scary in a way to have my marginal status increasingly brought home to me by encounters similar to the age-old pairing of head and brick wall. It would be nice to think I had my finger on 'the pulse', but it seems this sensation comes from me simply having my finger on 'a pulse', and, it turns out, some nameless and morbid pulse wholly different to that which titillates the fingertips of most of those with whom I share this planet. I frequently have experiences which seem somewhat like sitting with someone and holding their hand only to have them say goodbye and rise from the bench, leaving me wondering whose hand it is that I am still holding. Because I am alone again with this five-fingered beast.

Someone recently told me that he wasn't really keen on the kind of thing I write, but that he felt I was probably writing within a very particular field about which he knew little. Well, this is true, and yet it's false. I think if I really were writing in a particular field or genre, life would be much, much easier for me. But genres are tribal, and I think that none of these tribes - the most obvious candidates would be horror, science fiction and fantasy - would look at me and recognise me as one of their own. On the other hand, there's still too much of the ghetto-smell of genre about me for me to belong in the world of Booker Prize winners and other humanistic, literary writers who all produce utterly forgettable prose. I'm too tired to explain why this is at the moment. But...

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

'Alone', by Edgar Allan Poe.

No, I can't explain more right now. I must sleep. By the way, as mentioned, I did see Morrissey live on Friday, and will probably blog the event at some point in the near future.

Well, I've just received news that Tartarus Press has shifted the last few copies of Morbid Tales, my second collection of short stories, and will not be reprinting. I note that the book is already listed as out of print. Don't ask me where you can get hold of the few remaining copies that are for sale. Obviously not from Tartarus, and not from me, either. I don't have any spare copies, I'm afraid, as I've already given them all away to people who probably use them to adjust the height of their computer monitors with.



Every now and then, when people learn I write stuff, they will say to me something like, "Oh, I'll check the shops for your book", at which I usually get a sinking feeling and wish to kill myself. I suppose people can't be blamed too much for not buying my books, as they are ridiculously hard to get hold of. I've been told by someone that he always recommends my books to people, but they find the buying process online too Byzantine and eventually give up on the endeavour, along with the wearying business of taking air into their lungs. Well, now they have a very slight inkling of how I feel most of the time about being a writer. It's fucking horrible, thank you very much.

Anyway, I didn't mean to go on another rant. This (rant) has just come out unexpectedly - obviously it's still there lurking beneath the surface.

But no, people are sadly, sadly naive about what a writer's life is like. No, I don't earn a living from my fiction. I know many, many writers, and I'd say fewer than one percent of them earn a living from their writing. What I mostly see in the world of writing is writers getting shat on repeatedly. Another common misconception I'd like to dispell here. When a book is published, right, that doesn't mean that suddenly infinite copies of it exist in a never-to-be-exhausted supply. Print runs are finite, and, when you're not famous, are usually very, very limited. This means that, if you're lucky, the book could disappear from the marketplace, forever, within months. If you're not so lucky, it will theoretically stay in the marketplace forever, just because no one buys it, or it could get remaindered.

So, how do I feel about the first edition of Morbid Tales coming to an end? Hmmm. Well, Morbid Tales was my second collection, but the fact that it was a hardback, nicely produced, did give me a certain sense of actually being a writer. When I got the cardboard box with my copies in, I felt - and this is typical of me - nothing much really. This was what I'd worked for for many years. I had a very faint sense of satisfaction, hardly passing the threshold of thought into feeling. I like the cover. The book got one or two reviews that gave me something of a boost as a writer. I mean, in terms of confidence, not in terms of sales or anything like that. I'm glad, generally, to be associated with Tartarus Press, and if you want to support them and me you could always buy a copy of Strange Tales Volume II in which I have a story, and tell them you particularly want it for the story by Quentin S. Crisp. You could also just buy more books and read more generally.

I don't think I've answered my own question. How do I feel about Morbid Tales coming to an end? Well, copyright reverts to me now, so I can always try and interest some other publisher in the material. I'm a bit too tired for that at the moment. What I really feel is not so different to what I felt when I first held the solid book in my hands. But now I also feel a vague sense of freedom and a vague sense of emptiness. This is what I became a writer for - this freedom, this emptiness.

You know, it's actually obligatory, under Japanese (and some sections of Neapolitan) law, for me to like this song:

Well, I've just arrived in London and am marvelling again at how expensive everything is, and wondering how I ever managed to live here as an unsuccessful writer. The answer, of course, is that I didn't. I moved to Wales.

Anyway, my feet are sore. I've just come back from Waitrose with (hopefully) a week's worth of food. I'm vaguely looking forward to my birthday celebrations on Friday.

Before I went to Waitrose to buy tins of chopped tomato, pasta, and so on, I noticed a new review of my German collection, Dunkle Gestade (Aufgesang), online. I did the computer translation thing on it, and, well, it was pretty bad. Now, as I understand it, 'aufgesang' means something like 'volume one', but it's looking very much now like there's not going to be a volume two, after all. Every single review I have seen of my German collection has been bad. I believe sales have also been poor. Critics and public in Germany seem to be of one mind here: My stories are shit.



It's at times like this that I find that I'm forced to confront the unpleasant possibility that I might simply be a deluded no-hoper. I've often thought that there can be no worse fate than to be a 'bad poet'. Forever to be teased by the Muse, only to see her lavish her affections on everyone but yourself, to be, in fact, the Muse's cuckold, and a laughingstock. The very core of such an existence is embarrassment. Nobody wants to be this person, but somebody, some poor wretch, for the sake of cosmic completeness or some such thing, must be. And that person is me.

Faced with such overwhelming evidence that I am a complete failure, what do I do? I can't simply go on flying in the face of opinion, can I?

Hmmm. I suppose the logical thing to do would be to give up writing and find something to which I am more suited. Unfortunately, there is nothing to which I am more suited. I am a failure at the thing to which I am most suited. That's a bit of a bummer. There's nothing else I actually want to do, either. I mean, really, I'm so woefully lacking in motivation in every other area of my life apart from writing that... Well, I don't want to even tell you about it. Basically those other areas (and I'm not even going to mention them) have atrophied more or less into non-existence.

At times like this I want to believe in a god, just so I can tell him what a cunt he is.

Am I going to give up writing? Well, unfortunately, that seems unlikely. You know, I don't want to come across as indomitable, as some kind of unconquerable spirit, or anything. It's not really like that. It's more like - very much more like - someone who knows very well he will never be desirable simply carrying on in a resigned manner with his trainspotting. What else can I do? Quite simply, what else can I do?

Now, I'm sure that there are lots of glass-half-full people, who, if they read this, will want to point out that a few bad reviews does not a failure make. Well, maybe not. In which case we must ask, what is success? Am I happy with my stories? I don't know if I am, really. The point of stories for me is largely communication. I seem to be failing in my communication. But that's not quite it, either, is it? It's like painting a picture. You know if you haven't got that branch on that tree quite right, if the expression on that face isn't quite alive. My work is riddled with bad branches and dead faces. That, I think, is what really hurts. One can hope one is being too perfectionist, but one's hopes, then, rely on the feedback of reviewers and so forth. Apparently I haven't been perfectionist enough.



I was rather hoping that, since my success in the English-speaking world has been, shall we say, modest, that I would be like Edgar Allan Poe, whose reputation first took off in Europe. That must be the problem, I thought. They just don't understand me in the Anglosphere. But actually, my reception in Germany has been much worse than in Britain and America. So, that blows that theory.

I'm thinking now of Dazai Osamu, and feeling very close to him. I'm thinking of the odd-shaped tales in which he mentioned, here and there, how 'at that time' his stories never sold, or that he's been writing 'nothing but dasaku'. 'Dasaku' is a Japanese word meaning something like 'turkey' or, well, basically indicating artistic works that fail in their purpose. He says somewhere that he never understood the criticism that he was a talented writer who was unfortunately lacking in moral fibre, and that he felt it was the other way round. He was a very moral person with no talent, and knew no other way to write than simply to forge ahead blindly with the full force of his being. Yes, I understand these words very well.

Morrissey, I believe, once said that he was intensely interested in failure, adding impishly, "Only in other people, of course." And that's a telling qualification to his comment. Morrissey fascinates because he has made a success of failure. I am not like Morrissey. Rather, I am like one of the characters about whom he sings. Like, for instance, the 'hero' of Little Man, What Now?. "Did that swift eclipse torture you? A star at eighteen and then suddenly gone, down to a few lines on the back page of a faded annual." Except, of course, I have the consolation that I have never been a star, so 'eclipse', in my case, is inappropriate. No, more appropriate to me is the song Southpaw, but, once again, I don't even want to go into that. Basically, where Morrissey has made a success out of failure, I have only made a failure out of failure.

I am interested in failure, though. So interested that I seem to have to live it out quite thoroughly. In fact, only the other day, I was thinking of writing a blog post about why I am fascinated by Stuart Goddard, otherwise known as Adam Ant, of Adam and the Ants fame. Stuart Goddard was and probably still is, a fantasist, like myself. He threw himself with wonderful, deranged flamboyance into his silly, flimsy fantasy world, and for a while, the public supported him in his derangement. And then the trampoline was cruelly snatched from under him. Or so it seems.



"Ridicule is nothing to be scared of!"

Yes, failure interests me, and I'm fairly philosophical about it. Even if I am a 'bad poet', I am also a bit of a contrary bastard, I suppose, and will simply go on writing bad poetry, literally or metaphorically, until I die. That will be my statement. That will my contribution to the world. I don't know if it's a choice or whether I just can't help it. It feels somehow like both at the same time - a choice that I can't help making. On his tombstone, Kafu wanted the epitaph 'Kafu the Scribbler'. Seidensticker, his translator and biographer, considered that Kafu had never written any single work worth translating. I love Kafu. Perhaps I will have something similar on my tombstone. "Quentin S. Crisp. 1972 - 2010. He wrote a load of really stupid stories."

Anyway, we'll all be turned into robots in two years, and live happily ever after, so it won't matter.

Just in case this sounds like unmitigated self-pity, I'll add something else from one of Dazai's stories here. I forget the title, but it was a story in the form of letters being written between two writers. The older writer (I believe) scolds the younger that he has a "masterpiece complex", that he is impatient to write a masterpiece so that he can get it over with and stop writing. But there is no end to writing. You simply have to pick yourself up, and pick your pen up, and carry on. And carry on. And because there's no ending, it's perpetually as if all you have done so far has come to nothing, and you are only just starting. And that's the way it has to be.

The title of this blog entry comes from a song by Momus called, I Was a Maoist Intellectual in the Music Industry:

I became a hotel doorman, I stood there on the doormat
Clutching my forgotten discs in their forgotten format
Trying to hand them out to all the stars who sauntered in
The ones who hadn't been like me, who hadn't lived in vain
I gave up ideology the day I lost my looks
I never found a publisher for my little red books
When I died the energy released by my frustration
Was nearly enough for re-incarnation

But if I could live my life again the last thing that I'd be
Is a Maoist intellectual in the music industry
No, if I could live my life again I think I'd like to be
The man whose job is to stop the men who think like me
Yeah! If l could live my life again that'd be the thing to be
The man who plots the stumbling blocks
In the lives of the likes of me!

Excellent stuff. I particularly like the use of the word 'nearly' in "nearly enough for re-incarnation". The narrator even fails to get re-incarnated through his frustration. I'm sure that's what will happen to me, too.

Oh, if anyone in Germany has read Dunkle Gestade and actually liked it, I would be quite interested to know.

Not long ago I announced that my short story, 'Sado-ga-shima', is now available from Rainfall as a chapbook. Well, that is now most definitely true, since I have received my author's copies of the book this AM.

I'm actually very pleased with it. It's a quirky and rather elegant little thing.

There are illustrations from Bret Jordan throughout, and the serried typeface, for some reason or no reason at all, looks good to me.



Many thanks to John B. Ford and Bret Jordan for this. It's not a typical horror story, or a story easy to categorise at all, and I'm chuffed to have it put out in this form. I do feel a little like a musician who has been working very hard on a piece that's kind of understated but difficult to play (a musician's piece), and managed to pull it off. I certainly don't want to overstate the case, because this is no blockbuster, but I feel a tiny little bit like, say, David Bowie after making Low, knowing pretty well that it will take some people a few years to realise he's made one of the pivotal albums of the seventies.

But no, perhaps that's too much of an overstatement. Let me put it this way then, I feel a tiny bit like Morrissey, sneaking one of the best songs he's ever written, Michael's Bones onto a B-side, with no album release (well, it appeared on a compilation later, inevitably).

I shouldn't have said that really, should I? That's for others to decide. Anyway, that's how I feel.

Only a hundred copies of this available, so it probably won't be around for long. And nor will I.

I wanted to see if I’m famous yet – ha ha! – so I looked up my name on Google. Well, there are a few entries there. It is interesting to find one’s name in unexpected places. One entry was a kind of catalogue listing a number of small press publishers and giving information on their releases. In an entry on an anthology containing one of my stories was contained the following quote: “Any collection with a story by Quentin Crisp is worth having for eclecticism alone.” I was quite pleased with myself. Someone’s been following my progress and decided that my work is not only eclectic, but worth seeking out, I thought to myself. Then I noticed another entry, about a short story collection to which I had written the introduction. “Interesting to see an introduction provided by the best-selling author Quentin Crisp, who usually does not stray into the realm of genre fiction,” ran the quote. I don’t know if that’s verbatim. Great! I thought. I’m a fricking best-selling author and I didn’t even know it! I’ll have to get on the phone to someone or other and check out how I can collect the royalties I didn’t know I had… and so on. But what does he mean, “usually does not stray into the realm of genre fiction”? Surely I’ve done a fair bit of straying in that area? And then it dawned on me – whoever wrote this thinks I’m the OTHER Quentin Crisp. Let’s try and clear up this confusion, shall we?

Here is a picture of the other Quentin Crisp:

Now, here is a picture of me:

I’ve just been interrupted by my friend Ross, where was I? Oh yes, this is me, the one without the heavy make-up.

Yes, you may be wondering, but which one is the REAL Quentin Crisp? Well, I’m quite fond of the other one, but now that it’s me against him I have to be merciless and say, I am the real Quentin Crisp. How can I say that with such certainty? Well, there’s a rather boring explanation. I was christened Quentin Crisp. He was christened Dennis Pratt. It’s that simple. Ah, you might say, but what’s in a name? He is the real Quentin Crisp in the sense that he is the famous and therefore the definite article. Hmmm. I wonder. I have suffered for my name in the playground and in adult life. I routinely carry my passport around with me, and, when people refuse to believe my name, which is a frequent occurrence, I show them. While Dennis may have suffered for many things, I don’t think he suffered for his name. I think I have earned my name.

So you’re the real Quentin Crisp, then? Well, what does that mean? Who do you think you are? This is the kind of question that I feel I will have to face a number of times before I die. Strangely, I do have quite a distinct idea of who I am, though it’s not an idea that is easy to put into words. I say ‘strangely’ because, these days it’s practically a heresy for any intellectual to suggest that there is such a thing as a self. I, on the other hand, for better or for worse, am very attached to the self and to individual identity. That attachment to individual identity is…er ….very much a part of my identity. That is why, even though, for years and years, to this very day, I hate and detest introductions, because I will have to give my name to someone, when it came to trying to make up a pen name with which to write, I just could not do it. I could not think of anything apart from the name I have. I identify with my literal identity. That’s the kind of guy I am, and I no longer expect anyone to understand that.

Quentin Crisp – it’s hardly a common name, is it? It would have been the perfect symbol of my individuality if only it had not already been identified with a famous person. Now, instead of individuality, it must be the symbol of a kind of irony, a kind of destiny that is not destiny. And that irony is further increased by that fact that my predecessor changed his name to mine. I kept mine the same, but now it looks as if I am the one following in his footsteps. Anyway, you can tell us apart because I use my middle initial, S, as my official pen name.

I suppose you want to know if I’m gay, now, too? For the answer to that question you’ll have to read my works – especially The Haunted Bicycle, which should be out soon-ish – and try and work it out for yourself. So there.