Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Ladies and Gentlemen, I Give You… Worms!

Well, I have come to a decision. I have recently passed the seven hundred page mark with my novel The Sex Life of Worms, and the end is still a long way off. That’s seven hundred hand-written pages, so it will shrink down, but even so, it’s an epic of slime and squelching. I have started word-processing what I have written so far, and I have decided to serialise Worms here on my weblog. There are a number of reasons for this decision.


First of all, this novel looks like taking years to finish, and I’m really not sure that there’s that long left for human civilisation, so I might as well start disseminating this stuff now. Also, I have doubts about everything I write, but I don’t know if I’ve ever had doubts like the ones I’ve had about Worms. This could be a (very) flawed masterpiece. Or it could be a novelty with a few good bits here and there. Or it could be a big heap of worms’ excrement. I would like to test it out a little on the real world.


Another reason I want to serialise it is the simple nostalgia for an age when fiction was serialised and when, it seems, writers could actually make a living. I believe fiction still is serialised in magazines and so on in Japan. I am envious.


Finally, perhaps, I think that this is a piece of work that no publisher will want to touch, or if they did, it would very probably be banned. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were banned, anyway, though that’s neither a hope nor a promise.


Okay, here’s another finally. It’s a way of rewarding – or punishing, depending on your point of view – those people who bother to read my weblog. Because such people are few, I have no fear of being ripped off. Anyway, I might start removing earlier parts of the serial after I’ve got some way into it.


The novel is, of course, first draft, and I would like to point out that it needs a huge amount of revising. There is a lot of redundant material in there, as well as continuity problems, bad writing and so on. But the revision will have to wait until I have actually finished writing and word-processing the whole thing. Anyway, I hope you find something there to enjoy.


Ladies and gentlemen, very soon I shall give you, The Sex Life of Worms! Their nasty tricks are beyond belief! Gasp in wonder at the alien perversities that these invertebrates perpetrate!