Hi Quentin, first things first, I would like to welcome you to the all-new and vastly improved Rainfall website...
Now that the pleasantries are over, it’s time to twist the knife...
MR: Is there a defining moment in your life that helped you in your decision to put pen to paper?
QSC: I think the short answer is ‘no’. Writing seems to have defined my life from a very early age, and I can’t remember any original cause for this. I tend to think that I have memories of some other world, and that, being stranded in this one, I have no choice but to try and write in order to keep in touch with my lost home and keep its memory alive. You can take that as literally or as metaphorically as you wish.
MR: If you could choose a muse, what would it be and why?
QSC: I feel somewhat divided here. In fact, maybe that’s it. Maybe my muse is division itself, and not just Joy Division. But to try and continue with my original train of thought, my first muse would be something childish and asexual, such as that renegade Timelord, the Doctor. In other words, he presents an image of trustworthiness, innocence, adventure, humour and so on. I suppose you could call it something like ‘the magic of childhood’. My second muse would have to be something furtively and shamefully – but at the same time innocently – sexual, like Judy Garland’s underwear or something. In fact, you can see this kind of muse in its full-blown glory (-hole) in Rule Dementia!’s ‘The Tao of Petite Beige’. (In fact, Bettie Page is pretty much the perfect muse.) I’m quite interested in pornography as a form of or influence on literature, but more than that, I am interested in the erotic potential of sexual unfulfilment. My third muse might be something like a mandala or a statue of the Buddha, just because, contemplating such things seems to convince me of the worthlessness of all creativity. They are anti-muses, in a way, since the aim of Buddhism is the ultimate white blank of Nirvana, a kind of synthesis rather than my (the artist’s) deliberate division of all things into the colourful spectrum of creativity that is known in Buddhism as Samsara. So this Buddhist muse creates an anti-creative creative tension in what I do. Maybe I’m just flogging a dead horse.
MR: I happen to know that you speak Japanese and have indeed travelled to Japan on several occasions, what attracted you to this country and its culture?
QSC: That’s a surprisingly difficult question. I always feel this is a really boring answer, but I first got interested in Japanese culture many years ago through watching the animated film Akira. I feel like I want to distance myself a bit from the growing crowd of manga-heads to be found in the West, however. I’m not so much interested in modern or post-modern Japanese culture, or Japanese youth culture, as I am in the few remaining traces of what might be the closest thing we will ever know to an alien civilisation. I mean, the fact that it was totally alien in its customs and values before it was forced to open for trade with the West, is, to me, something of extraordinary value. Some people say that Japan has still not westernised, only modernised. I’m rather suspicious of that argument. Factories, supermarkets, car parks – these things are the same the world over, which is to say, they are utterly loathsome. So, patronising as it may seem, I have to state honestly that I was attracted to Japan by a kind of exotic incomprehensibility, and even a forbidding severity, in which I wished to immerse myself. I found, however, that as a foreigner, there was really not much immersion going on, except perhaps in the public baths, and that there was not much left I wanted to be immersed in anyway. Business has made the world ugly. I think we should ban all offices and suits and ties. Business – it’s a dirty business.
Warning! The following question developed its own basic awareness and decided that it was to be broken into three separate entries all with secret names that have long been forgotten.
MR: To date you have had three collections published, the first by Rainfall's very own living atrocity, John B Ford, The Nightmare Exhibition (BJM Press), the second, Morbid Tales (Tartarus Press), and the third, Rule Dementia by the wonderful folks at Rainfall. Can you tell us a little about each of these books in turn and more importantly will they improve the readers’ sexual prowess?
QSC: The first is really pretty raw, I think. I’m not sure how good it is, because I hardly dare to re-read it these days. However, it might have the benefits of a certain intensity. I do know that at the time I was writing those stories, I had no idea if they would ever be published, and I didn’t know anything about the writing scene. I therefore wrote them in quite a desperate manner, as if they were so many messages in so many bottles, or as if they were all attempts to compose the perfect suicide note. I never really seriously intended to be a horror writer, but I think there was a consistent morbidity and darkness in these stories that made people assume that I was a pretty committed horror writer, or that I should be committed.
QSC: The second one… Basically, I had about fourteen stories that I wanted published all together under the title “You Put the Dirty Pictures in My Head!” The original publisher for this projected volume, however, fell apart, and the collection broke up with it, like a meteorite entering Earth’s atmosphere. Tartarus Press accepted seven of the stories from that original collection, plus another story from my juvenilia that I sent them for the sake of completion, as a kind of sample (I was very surprised about that, but apparently it didn’t read like juvenilia). I didn’t have much control over the presentation of that volume. There’s something in me of the frustrated rock star, and I tend to think of my collections like concept albums, but with this one my original concept was lost, so it ended up as simply a collection of stories. It is a very attractive book, and I think it has put me on the map in a minor way, like a hamlet off a B-road somewhere. I noticed that it didn’t get anywhere in the BFS awards, which made me feel unexpectedly weird, as if I had been snubbed. I had the distinct impression that I was at the wrong party and that people, if they noticed me, were wondering, “What’s he doing here?” The problem is I don’t push myself enough, I’m sure. And the fact that I probably don’t really belong anywhere. Anyway, Morbid Tales has some of my best stuff in it. I think it’s less horror-based than the first, which may have put some people off. You know, people like to have their expectations fulfilled. Having said that, it got mainly excellent reviews, about which I was, I’m afraid to say, predictably pleased. I’m not really sure what to say about this volume except that it is quite miscellaneous. I suppose it also contains some developments in it in terms of me ‘finding my voice’, as they say. I think a story like ‘The Tattooist’ is quite original, and is very close to my general intentions for what I want to do with writing – I want to transcend boundaries by doing the simple thing and being myself. It gets my goat when people say that everything’s been done. No, it hasn’t. These people are too hung up on ‘technique’. They just need to get in touch with who they are a bit. The problem is, they probably aren’t anybody.
QSC: The third collection is a bit more experimental than the other two, and Rainfall were decent enough to give me a lot of control with the presentation and so on, for which I’m grateful. From the reactions so far I think there is an element of people not ‘getting it’. Fine. I can give all my reasons for why the stories are like they are, but that’s not going to change anyone’s mind. Those who like them will like them. I suppose it might help if you’re not expecting to read short Stephen King pieces or something like that. And it’s not the getting there that’s important; it’s the journey – and so on. In other words, these stories are not meant to be about plot, about some sort of staccato race to the finish line. They’re about enjoying the scenery of whatever part of the story you happen to be in. Having said that, they still do have plot, just like paintings have composition. I wanted this to make a big splash in the scene, but I wonder if it’s not more likely to create simply a short, baffled silence. I don’t know. Is it egotistical for me to hope that I will at least put a tiny crack in the highly categorised edifice of marketing-led publishing? Or is it merely quixotic?
QSC: As to whether these volumes will increase the reader’s sexual prowess, I think there’s no doubt about that.
MR: I'm standing in the vast and cosmic space of a retail outlet; in one hand I have Rule Dementia in the other, a packet of 12 economy light bulbs. Why should I choose to purchase your collection?
QSC: Well, obviously you should choose the light bulbs, or you won’t be able to read anything. However, if I have to play the salesman for a moment, which is rather a paradoxical role in this case, I think that stories such as ‘The Haunted Bicycle’ and ‘Unimaginable Joys’ are the perfect antidote to this ugly, utilitarian world. It’s a matter of priorities. Do you want usefulness, or do you want to breathe in the air and taste beauty?
Choose a section of the above mentioned retail outfit to file your collection under.
QSC: ‘Lies and Disinformation.’ A subsection of ‘Beautiful Things’.
So far the public at large have only been exposed to short doses of your writing. Is this for safety reasons?
QSC: Well, I suppose it could be, but more than that, it’s for reasons beyond my personal control. I have a novel, which I personally consider to be the best thing I have written, but I have yet to find a publisher. Someone said it was too horrible, and someone else said it was too intellectual. I hope that I’ll eventually hit upon someone who just likes it and wants to publish it. It’s called, “Remember You’re a One-Ball!” I’m also writing a vast novel at the moment under the title Domesday Afternoon, which may take about ten years to complete; we’re talking Kate Bush album lengths of time here.
MR: What are your feelings on the specialist press in general, and how do you imagine a mainstream publisher would present your fiction to the public?
QSC: Well, I’m certainly glad that it (the specialist press) exists, or I think I’d be fucked. I get frustrated, though, because I think I could easily be sold on the bookshelves of any normal bookshop. I don’t see that what I do is any less accessible than, say, Iain Banks or Patrick McGrath. Okay, my prose can be a bit more purple than theirs, and I suppose my grip on reality is a bit looser, but hey, we’re all individuals. I suppose that’s the problem, publishers generally want to present you as something that already exists, rather than what you are. Anyway, I haven’t entirely lost hope of becoming a household name. I might just have to die first, that’s all. After all, you can’t expect the vultures to descend for you if you’re not going to die for them first. But being positive, the good thing about the specialist press is that there are one or two people amidst the cliques who will understand what you’re doing and give you a certain amount of artistic freedom. The downside is, you can’t make a living from it, and you don’t reach a wide audience. The whole scene is so riddled with marketing-bolstered prejudices and fallacies; I wish I could change it. Failing that, I shall have to work with it. We shall meet again in a place where there is no shadow.
But I’ve failed to answer the second part of the question. Basically, I should be presented as literature. What I write is fantasy without being genre. It is dark without being cynical. It is in many ways the antithesis of realism, although realism is one of its themes. Basically, for me, literature is the home of the imagination, not of materialistic journalism and atheistic posturing, but of THE IMAGINATION. I don’t think that’s such a strange idea.
MR: Are there three works of art the world can't live without? These can be books, art, film, music etc.
QSC: There aren’t. There isn’t even one. Okay, I’ll stop being so humourless. Let’s see. The Sea of Fertility, a tetralogy by Mishima Yukio. No Longer Human by Dazai Osamu and the first album from The Smiths.
MR: The minions slaving away in the Rainfall dung... er basement are very fond of your story 'Tim', can you tell us a little bit of background regarding the adventures of Tim the Dog?
QSC: Tim was a very good-natured and affectionate King Charles spaniel with whom I had a very long and close association. You know this already, of course, but he lived and died a virgin, which fact never ceases to elicit my compassion. He also had a dark side, but I’m not sure if I should repeat such personal stories for all to read here. Let us just say that, virgin though he was, he did not die without tasting another dog’s penis. But he was a good dog, really, a sweet dog. I will not have a word said against him. He has been misunderstood, I fear. I look forward to being reunited with him in the next world.
MR: After your starring role in John B Ford's wedding DVD, many people have commented that you would make an excellent 11th Doctor for the BBC. What costume would you choose and why?
QSC: That’s a difficult one. Let me cogitate a moment. Okay, I have cogitated, and it seems to me that for some reason I am drawn to a slightly conservative look with a vague hint of the bohemian. I’m thinking, first of all, of the outfit worn by Tora-san, the hero of the Japanese series of comedy films Otoko wa Tsurai Yo! There are certain nostalgic nuances to it that I find attractive. It has something about it of the atmosphere of that disappearing generation whose life was slow and whose pleasures were simple. In terms of England, it’s the generation of cardigans, chunky golden bracelets and dog racing. Perhaps you know the type. Think Sid James.
QSC: I also quite like the similar style sported by David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth, as well as by William Burroughs and Nagai Kafu:
QSC: This look seems to express a sort of resignation as well as sophistication in aging. It seems to say, I may be decaying slowly, and feel the need because of this sad fact to be a little detached from life, but I am still the same I AM somewhere underneath.
But perhaps I’ll change my mind about this costume about go for something a bit more outlandish.
MR: Last but not least, what's next for Quentin S. Crisp?
QSC: I want to change my name to Judy Garland and release my own range of nostalgic lingerie. Other than that, I’m not sure. I might give it all up tomorrow, whatever it is. I’m actually rather hoping to be the next Walt Disney. There was such potential in all those Snow Whites and Tinkerbells.
MR: Ladies and Gentlemen, and all things in-between, please put your hands together and pull them apart, repeat the process until your arms ache and your hands tingle, for our special guest Quentin S. Crisp.
Martin Roberts is an independent filmmaker, who currently resides in a mental institute commonly known as North Staffordshire. Current projects include; an essay on Peter Jackson’s Braindead, in the forthcoming collection, Cinema Macabre (PS Publishing / BFS), and he is working on an adaptation of a short story, written by a well-known US author and publisher. Contact Martin @ www.PurpleRage.co.uk
