Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Every Inch a Mammal

First published on Opera Mon 29th Mar, 2004.

Well, on Saturday the day started with me getting some post from a literary agency to whom I had sent a manuscript. They had sent it back. With a rejection letter. Par for the course, really, but I couldn’t help being upset somehow, and dreaming of revenge. I find those standard rejection letters hypocritical and sniffy. I can’t help thinking that what they’re really saying is, “So you think you’re a writer, do you? Do you, eh?” But maybe I’m just paranoid?????


Anyway, later I went off into London and a pub just off Trafalgar Square for the monthly convening of a meeting with certain writing – and drinking – associates. Then it was off to meet another friend of mine and go with him to The Young Vic, where we were to see a play. Before doing that, we grabbed a bite to eat together and I told him about the latest news in the world of would-be freelance writer Quentin S Crisp, which is to say, news of the latest person who has been trying to fuck me over. I won’t go into details here.


Recently, and particularly on Saturday, I have found a certain song by Morrissey hovering vaguely about my consciousness. In fact, I’ve been in something of a Morrissey mood generally. Anyway, the song in question is Why Don’t You Find Out For Yourself, from the album Vauxhall and I, and it has become something of a favourite of mine. Here are the lyrics:


Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself


The sanest days are mad

why don't you find out for yourself

then you'll see the price

very closely

some men here

they have a special interest

in your career

they wanna help you to grow

then syphon all your dough

why don't you find out for yourself

then you'll see the glass

hidden in the grass

you'll never believe me, so

why don't you find out for yourself

sick down to my heart

that's just the way it goes

some men here

they know the full extent of

your distress

they kneel and pray

and they say:

"long may it last"

why don't you find out for yourself

then you'll see the glass

hidden in the grass

bad scenes come and go

for which you must allow

sick down to my heart

that's just the way it goes

Don't rake up my mistakes

I know exactly what they are

and...what do YOU do?

well...you just SIT THERE

I've been stabbed in the back

so many many times

I don't have any skin

but that's just the way it goes




What’s interesting about this song – you probably can’t tell just from the lyrics – is that, despite the fact the subject matter is, on the surface, quite dry, and possibly difficult to relate to – it seems to be about the dirty shenanigans that go on behind the scenes in the music world and in the world of the rich and famous generally – it packs an emotional punch of the kind more usually associated with some plangent love song.


I’m not famous, but I have devoted a great deal of energy to an endeavour – namely writing – whose success is often measured by the level of fame of the practitioner. Even in my limited experience, I have encountered enough ‘behind the scenes’ stuff to become ‘sick down to my heart’ now and then. More than anything, I have the impression that to have any kind of artistic vision, any kind of dream, any vestige of integrity, is to be in a very lonely position in this world of apathy, shabbiness and idiocy. This is a world in which ‘professionalism’ is the highest virtue, in which publishers remind us again and again that ‘this is a business’ as if to rub the artist’s nose in the fact that even here the artistic sensibility and artistic principles are regarded as risible. And what do these publishers do? Well, they just sit there, on their fat arses, knowing full well that it’s a buyer’s market, not giving a toss about talent or originality or art, just waiting for the next fly to stick to the web of formula that they have already woven to feed their bellies. Tell me it isn’t so!


Anyway, we then proceeded to The Young Vic to watch our play. The play in question was The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder. In the programme I picked up afterwards the play is described thus: “[Wilder] creates, in The Skin of Our Teeth, a theatrical treadmill of entrapment for the Antrobus family, facing the end of time again and again, until we realise that the human race is perpetually caught in crises, but also perpetually surviving.” Well, I don’t know about the “perpetually surviving” bit. Yes and no. We don’t ,necessarily survive, but we have done so far. I did enjoy the play very much. Recently I have been reading The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel, about the last man on Earth after the rest of the human race have been wiped out by a purple cloud of poisonous gas. I have been reading this, I suppose, as I kind of mental rehearsal for catastrophe. In this book there is a lone that goes, “…nothing could be more appallingly insecure than living on a planet.” And that’s very much the feeling I got from the Wilder play, too. However, in total effect I did not find it depressing. It seemed to be saying, “Things have always been like this. All we have is now, and all we can do is try, even knowing that we’re going round and round in circles from existence to oblivion and back again.”


This disanthropocentric view of cosmic insecurity was expressed early on in man’s struggle to evolve, and had Mr. Antrobus elected as president of the Mammal Party. Some of his rivals had accused him of wavering in his convictions in the past. Apparently, before he was born he had vacillated between ‘fin and scale’ or some such thing, before finally becoming Mammalian. Indira Varma – who I note with interest has also appeared in a film called Kama Sutra – played an ambitious maid, giving it a bit of the old Monroe happy-birthday-Mr.President here and there. And one of the highlights for me was when she did a vaudeville turn in honour of the new president, singing such lines as “You could have been winged like a beetle/You could have been exoskeleetal” and “You make me feel so mammalian”. I suppose that there were reminders for me – as I veer off into my invertebrate, worm-holed alien realms – that amidst all this cosmic insecurity I am still mammalian myself, and – kind of – human. Indira Varma was one of those reminders, I must say, making my feel, yes, very mammalian.




But I also recognised myself in Mr. Antrobus’ son, Henry, who it is intimated is actually Kane of ‘Kane and Abel’ fame. I didn’t like the character much to begin with, but when he rebels against his father, the president of the Mammals, I felt my own misanthropy, my will to say ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’, my thirst for revenge, embodied there.


I don’t know what I really want to say about all this ultimately, just that all of these thoughts somehow became associated with each other in my head. Hatred of the human race, and yet anxiety that it might end. Loneliness. Acceptance. Hope. Disappointment. It goes on and on, as the delectable Indira Varma reminded us at the end, when the play came back to its beginning again. It was time for us to go home, but really the play was still going on.