Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Another Can of Worms

First published on Opera, Thurs 25th Mar 2004

The title of this blog, to wit, The Directory of Lost Causes, is an allusion to part of a story by Jorge Luis Borges. Basically, there is a quote from the story - I believe it is 'The Sword and the Scar' - that runs, "For the gentleman only the lost cause should be attractive." It is a sentiment that struck a real chord with me, and also seemed to express why it is I am so in love with the works of another writer, Nagai Kafu.



Anyway, I have just written my daily quota for my novel The Sex Life of Worms, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, what a lost cause this novel is. So far I have written five hundred and fifty five pages, and a half, in long-hand, and the end seems as far off as ever. The novel is about a race of worm-like aliens, and purports actually to be a translation of a novel by one of these creatures, a particularly decadent worm by the name of Qsshflrrch. I got the idea for the story when my brother described to me the rather unusual sex life of actual earthworms. Earthworms are hermaphrodites, so their sex-life is decidedly strange from a human point of view. I decided this was a great foundation on which to build a very alien society and view of life. I really wanted to write from an alien point of view. I also wanted to construct a kind of elaborate joke which I would flog to death deliberately and gleefully, in keeping with the fact that the joke was to write the most depraved kind of alien pornography that I possibly could. On top of that, I wanted the novel to read like a bad translation, because it has been translated into English from a language several billion miles removed from it by a human translator sent over the edge of insanity by his extended period of study on the worm planet. As you can probably imagine from all this, the novel really is a lost cause. Why do I persist with it? I do not know.



In interesting contrast, perhaps, is the novel I have just finished and am now typing up, called, "Remember You're a One-Ball!!" which is - relatively - commercial, having a very tight plot and recognisable novelistic traits such as character development, human interest and so on. I did not set out to write such a snappy sort of thriller. It just happened. And I think that its commerciality - I think it is commercial, anyway - is something to do with the fact that it is very much concerned with themes of revenge against human society. Thus the appeal to human society.


Now I am planning my next novel, Domesday Afternoon, and, in writing the notes, I find myself strangely daunted. When I ask myself why the answer comes, because of the commerciality of "Remember You're a One-Ball!!" That novel has shaken me out of the habit of thinking of all of my works as lost causes and has made me start to think of them as works that must 'succeed'. And that has made it very difficult for me to start writing again. Clearly there is something to be said for lost causes.


Anyway, I shall leave you with an extract from The Sex Life of Worms, and if it seems unreadably bad, well, don't be surprised. I told you it was a lost cause:


At the side of the entrance, in a tangled coil, there squatted a nacre-smith, manipulating a live oyster-crab in sh-his tentacles, squeezing out the still liquid thread of nacre around a revolving mould. Shi-he was making an ornate scroll-holder, not dissimilar to those I had discovered in the Puzzle Garden. On the opposite side of the tunnel a scabrous-looking ichor-swab of dubious ability ground the axle of a kaleidophone, which set up a bubbling and wailing as of the cheap and distant festivities of a sad age devoid of self-knowledge. These two lame and harmless guardians on either side of the cavern mouth, each engaged in some colourful industry involving a revolutionary motion, were as if winding in the great twisting and turning of worm life, winding it in from every quarter of The Crevices, and the vast shanty-chaos of it all, and spinning that chaos into a musical thread of unity. If ever a denizen of The Crevices could feel a sense of belonging, then surely it was like this, on the threshold of The Sanctuary, between a nacre-smith and a kaleidophonic ichor swab.

Half regretful to pass through that swelling moment, I belly-sailed into the old, crater-dotted cavern with its lattice-booths of stalagmite and stalactite. It was my voluntary return as an anonymous guest. I wondered what my status was and how I would be received. Anyway, I wished to enjoy the dirty Crevice freedom of money, which comes with no recommendations or guarantees of the character and identity of the bearer, filthy money that is particular to no worm, but is secreted in the coelemic cavities of many and passed from tentacle to tentacle by unrecorded means. Money, I decided, was like sex in all ways except that the exchange it represented, dirtiest of all, was often consensual.


Just out of interest, I have just translated the above, using a real bad translator, Babel Fish, into German then back into English. And here is the result:


Shi shi-er formed a complex role owner, not differently to those, which I had discovered in the puzzle play garden. On the opposite side of the tunnel, which scabrous scabrous-Schauen of the doubtful ability ichor wipe, rubbed the wave kaleidophone, which set up a gushing and the Jammern starting from the inexpensive and distant festivenesses of a sad age, which is empty Self knowledge of. These two lamely and harmless guards on both sides of the cave opening, each engaged in somewhat multicolored industry, which includes a revolutionary movement with, were as if coil in large rotating and in the rotation continuous screw of the life and it inside from each quarter of the column and all wound the considerable sailor song chaos of it, and this chaos into a musical thread of the unit spinend.