Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

The Sex Life of Worms (Episode Five - Dr Jsshloamgs)


Dr. Jsshloamgs – the name holds associations like those of a figure embossed upon the obverse of a coin from such ancient times that coins were still in general use – is the life upon which this life depends as from a silken thread at whose end, all pupal, senseless and limbless, it forms a thrashing sack of striving-to-be. This solitary being, this veritable monolith, is my mentor and my benefactor. I do not hesitate, in my account of sh-him, to dispense with all euphemism and diplomacy. It is not precisely that I have no terror of severing the aforementioned thread. Nor is it that my pipette will automatically tend always towards eulogy. To nuzzle my theme simply, I am somewhere, distantly, but distinctly, aware that in my relation to Dr. Jsshloamgs I am irredeemably a lesser creature. If shi-he should see fit to take exception to my acid dribblings with regard to sh-him, then I can only submit myself to the shredding consequences of sh-his wrath. I must, however, profess my wonder that anyworm could claim offence at a mere inventory of the contents of my mind in which there might happen to exist assorted images of sh-him. Heaped upon this is the consideration, with me quite indignantly strong, that it is stupid and undignified to maintain lies of any kind between worms of intelligence. Let us proceed.

Dr. Jsshloamgs, when not occupied with sh-his duties, resides in a puzzling necrosis of rock cavities within the Haywire Rift. Because of the wild tectonic and other geologic peculiarities of the zone, there obtains there a phenomenon of fuzzy-coloured and rock-crawling lightning which generally discourages worms from making this the place where they coil head tailwards in sleep’s spiral. That lightning is the very reason that Dr. Jsshloamgs installed sh-himself here. Just as many worms frequent the Grottoes of Many-Hued Light in order to immerse themselves in meditations that would otherwise remain unexcited, so shi-he claims that shi-he never knew such crystalline inspiration of mind as when shi-he first encountered the region at a time of unspecified peregrination. Now, it seems, the arc-lightning that crackles almost ceaselessly around sh-his freakish abode has become necessary for the mental clarity and stimulation shi-he requires in sh-his visionary schemes.

There is something indefinably appropriate in sh-his residence here that I might express in these terms: that I feel certain that even before I had ever visited sh-him at home or had any knowledge of that home, that I always seemed to associate Dr. Jsshloamgs with a hoary crack of lightning. Perhaps this is something to do with sh-his shaggy and slime-teasing mane of cilia, for shi-he is of that stage of venerableness at which worms develop such auxiliary appendages in two hood-like, ventral grooves. Or perhaps it is due to sh-his overall bearing of wild and fissured nobility.

Excepting Dr. Jsshloamgs sh-himself, there are few worms who lair in this domain of distorted, molten-shaped and exceedingly sponge-like rock formations who do not have duties connected to the channelling of power from the area, generated by the harnessing of electro-magnetic and kinetic forces, to other parts of the city. Because of the importance of such duties, however, transport to the edge of the zone is tolerably convenient. Thus, Dr. Jsshloamgs habitually returns home by, and I make my occasional visits by, a slime-pod shuttle otherwise used almost exclusively by the workers at the various power plants and those who have business with them.

The time for my appointment had come round and I made, once again, the familiar journey. I crawled from the open lid of my slime-pod when it had achieved a stationary condition at its terminus, and slunk out through the disembarkation archway into the coal-dark, clinker-flinty and seamy tunnel beyond. Through other archways there glue-ily emerged other worms, their luminescence vivid from their recent immersion in slime. They were mere amorphous strangers to me, with flickers of identity here and there in their pigmentation, but otherwise weary as dragging sacks in their third-worm egolessness.

My way was not their way. Many of them turned into wild, bare-rock orifices before we came to the first bridge. It was from the first bridge that the anomalies of the region began. This marked the first chasm, or rather, the edge of the one large chasm in which were closely serried and irregularly streaking splinters of rock making the any divisions of smaller, though still staggeringly deep, abysses. These splinters, like mountains shivered into needles, were also riddled with the faveolate cave-systems mentioned. Since the splinters were subject to movement, the bridges between them were usually resinous and elastic in nature. This resin was also repellent to the lightning that flickered like disporting sting-tails in the abyss and climbed the rockfaces all electric myriapod.

My anonymous companions all having diverged at earlier points, I wriggled on into this semi-wilderness alone. If I had not known the way, I might have done well to follow the flickers of lightning to their point of greatest concentration. One soaring and grandiose deformation of rock gave way to the next, I shuffled over one swaying, sagging bridge after the other, until at last I drew up at the edge of the chasm in which Dr. Jsshloamgs’ lair was set. It is tempting, when viewing that lair from the brink of the chasm, to suppose that the chunk of rock of which it is comprised is held in place by the spokes of the bridges attached to surrounding splinters, for, if these bridges did not exist, that rock would be a perfect floating island in the air. With a freer reign given to the imagination’s frolicking, it seems instead that twisted knot of rock is supported by the phantasmagoria of arc-lightning that breaks forever against its sides in spasmic waves, and this, in fact, is nearer to the truth. For the lightning is only a visible manifestation of the electro-magnetic fields generated by the peculiar formation of rocks here.

I shuddered forward, launching myself over the precipice and across the resinous bridge, like an uneven rope of mucus. My senses seemed to sag in all directions as I did, so that all directions were a dizzy, plunging down. And while still on the most tenuous course of this swaying, I caught in the prickling of my antennae certain articulations at once distinct from the sizzle of the aurora and in solemn harmony with it. It was the voice of my mentor, as centreless and manifold as the sound of flames, if only the corrosion of flames had been damper. Shi-he was engaged in branding the air with a recital from the Exhortation section of The Grand Philosopharch’s Analects.

“We who have forsaken the deep waters in forgetfulness. We who have wheezed and flopped down millennia, heads half-raised, half-bowed in the vapours of the rock-wreathed air!

“Observe – these tunnels inward lead and back unto themselves. Observe – inward is the way of our exploring. For what is ever inward may forever strive and build without collapse…”



The spume of electric waves spangled the air about as those waves broke upon the bellying bridge, a shattering, a reaching up and out, and a falling away into nothingness. As Dr. Jsshloamgs reached the point in the Exhortations about striving without collapse, I gained the threshold of the rocky portal, which seemed the entrance to the centre of the warped vortex of gravity that obtained in that place. The interior of Dr. Jsshloamgs’ dwelling was redolent with a darkness made for feelers, like a pall, with curling through it a tincture of smoke from an odour-lamp now burning. The moment I quivered over the threshold, shi-he turned to the entrance from the scroll in sh-his tentacles, and, as if still deeply absorbed in sh-his recitation, uttered the words:

“What thing is this from unknown caverns creeps?”

I lowered all my appendages.

“No thing without appointment.”

Shi-he regarded me some while in silence, only ambiguous, purring marsh-fires of cyan, mauve and gentian in sh-his pigmentation, until I quite believed sh-his last words had been no affectation.

“The appointment, I remember,” said Dr, Jsshloamgs, “Its spawn escapes conjecture.”

“It is a very simple matter that I come about. I merely request a renewal of your seal, since the last one is due to expire.”

“Your speech betrays you and exemplifies the problem, whether sly or involuntary. I know why you’re here, even if you sport ignorance. Someworm at a fungi bar called The Colony trying to besmirch my name by using me as a guarantor. Someworm bearing your seal. You apprehend, a seal is not a simple thing at all. Everything hangs on a seal, as you should know.”

These words at once distressed and encouraged me. Distressed, because it seemed that, after all, some deep thing was taking place. Encouraged, because these words suggested that Dr Jsshloamgs would now turn sh-his powers of cerebration to the subject and might even be able to apprise me of its nature.

“Do you still compose odours?” asked Dr Jsshloamgs next.

“Only for my own satisfaction.”

“You will have observed that I have been composing myself. Why don’t you empty the burners and show me how your art has developed?”

“I would not presume to interrupt your evocative concoction.”

“Odours are ever ephemeral… One must not care too much to prolong them. Our discussion requires you to compose a new odour.”

I felt disinclined to compose before my mentor, but it appeared I had no choice. I slithered over to where the odour lamp burned, extracted the receptacles from their positions above the flames and emptied them of their current contents. Upon the floor were arranged the materials my mentor had recently been using to compose with – the usual dried humus, fungi, roots and so on.

“Use any ingredients that you find.”

Shi-he was referring, I thought, not only to the specially prepared materials, but to the lichens, slime-weeds and other growths that shi-he had artfully cultivated on the walls of the chamber. Unsure of my own mood, I did not know where to begin. For a tufted dehiscence of moments, my senses oscillated about the cranny-like details of that chamber as if for inspiration. I followed the calcified ramp that spiralled around the walls to the upper chambers, but my senses only became lost in this galaxy of ventricular caves like translucently albino bats. With my senses scattered in this way I laid my tentacles upon a sheaf of dried beetle-spray agaric to use as my stock for the odour. I bent before the odour lamp and filled the receptacle of the lowest burner, swinging it back into position above the flame on the hinged arm. I began my selection of other materials, all the while in sidelong, radar-like observation of my old teacher.



Shi-he had now laid down the scroll from which shi-he had been reciting, and it rolled amidst others scattered on the floor in solemn disarray like the ransacked library of Time. Shi-he seemed poised as if for an address. The glow from the ever-dancing web of lightning outside flickered on sh-his skin, showing where it had become dry and scabrous with age, where unguent had been liberally applied, and where it was flaking off in scales. I savoured all this in silence. At last shi-he spoke.

“What is the progress of your writing?”

“At present my writing is in limbo. I have written, and I think I shall again. All I have written so far seems like a brood of unfertilised eggs. It is there. It exists, but it seems to have no issue in the world. I have had no requests from journals of late, either.”

“And since when have requests fallen off?”

“I understand what you are nuzzling, but can the publication of Acid Meditations have had such a repellent effect?”

“We worms are curious about hybrid and exotic things, and introduce them to the twisting caverns where we dwell. But if we are not careful, even the whorlskin tree that we have trained to darkness may find itself restricted and heave its limbs askew beneath a low cave roof. Do you regret your choice of occupation?”

“I am not sure I understand what you mean by ‘regret’.”

These words for me were one with an aerial, choking sensation. Carefully I picked up a poisonous-white little sheaf of dried axolotl weed and placed some of it in one of the receptacles.

“You could have sloughed your way to the position of Philosopharch.”

“I could have, if the higher academy had not detected signs of philosophical corruption in my compositions. That is not a matter of choice.”

“But do you regret it?”

“Since I cannot control it, what use is it to regret?”

“Your pipette has left a trail behind it, and one that is interesting, if disturbing, to trace. I have known that trail since close to its inception. I have read your letters when they were in gestation. They swelled confidently into philosophical compositions, but there they were turned aside. They veered off, whether by reaction or predestination, into your ambient pieces, from which slimepit of glistening and inchoate corruption, there finally emerged Acid Meditations. It is all one trail. Your existence at the moment consists of the two unbalanced elements of this malformed, lumbering, but brilliantly-coloured thing that is your writing, and your lowly position at the seal office. Such disequilibrium is not good, especially when the large and lumbering half of it is the half so tousled with corruption.

“What is repellent in Acid Meditations is not corruption itself so much; it is what that work is a corruption of. You have confounded philosophy with art, or vice versa, and arrived at a treacherous compound.”

*******
The Sex Life of Worms Episodes 1a,1b,1c, 2, 3 and 4.

The Great (and Failed) Escape

There are vague rumours abroad that my third collection of short stories is soon to be published. I even have a hazy picture of what will be the front cover as evidence. The picture that I have does not contain the collection's title, but I can state with some confidence that the title will be Rule Dementia! If you put this title together with the picture, you might begin to get the faint inklings of a concept.



I think there might even be an introduction in this collection. I say that, because I wrote one. In fact, here is an excerpt from it:

It’s been a long and difficult journey, typified by the fact that I first wrote this opening sentence in 2002 in Kyoto, and am rewriting it now in 2004 on an industrial estate near Reading. The original sentence went like this: “It’s been a long and difficult journey, and it’s by no means over yet, but at last my misshapen work is beginning to see print.”

I now wonder about the journey metaphor. As I write this, the metaphor that comes to mind in its place is one that has occurred to me a number of times in my life, an absurd and miserable metaphor that goes like this: Writing is an attempt to escape from the grim prison of reality by digging a tunnel with a teaspoon. Full of dread lest the whole thing cave in on my head, or I am discovered and deprived of my teaspoon, my hands trembling, I scoop out one more speck of dirt, and one more. My heart is wracked by pain and sorrow, and I dream only of the light and the air which I may never see.

Yes, just as the opening to my introduction suggests, all things are uncertain in the world of publishing, or, if they are not, it certainly seems that way to a painfully anxious person such as myself.

If anyone out there wants to know more about the collection, I shall be only too happy to enlighten them. Anyone... out there... beyond this tunnel... that has just collapsed around my ears...

A Letter to Kawabata Yasunari

A Writer's Life for Me - A Letter to Kawabata Yasunari

My search of the Internet convinces me that I am laying before you rare and precious information. I have translated the second piece by Dazai, as promised. I wanted to write an informed introduction to this piece, and, not having many of my books with me, I have made a search of the Internet, but can find no mention of the incident that forms the piece’s background. I am reminded once again what a pitifully small number of people share my interests and are likely to appreciate my efforts.

Anyway, this just means I will have to provide the background from my memory. This is it, and I am afraid that, because of monumental public apathy, I am unable to supply dates and so on:

Early in his career, Dazai Osamu was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize, the most prestigious literary prize awarded within Japan. It seems that he was likely to receive the prize, too, if it were not for the opposition of someone on the panel of judges. That person was none other than Kawabata Yasunari. When Dazai learnt of this, he wrote an open letter to Kawabata. Many people thought that Dazai was mad to make such an open attack on one of the most prominent figures of the literary establishment. After this, it seems, Dazai became even more isolated.

Dazai eventually went on to write a scathing, merciless and comprehensive attack on the entire literary establishment, under the title, ‘Nyoze Gamon’ or ‘So I have Heard it Spoken’. I really wanted to translate this, but it is a much longer and more challenging piece, and it will have to wait till a later date. Dazai begins this piece with the declaration that to attack an enemy is a trifling matter – what one must do is attack the enemy’s god. And he proceeds to take a crowbar to the gods of the self-satisfied old men who controlled literature at that time, and who no doubt control it still.

Kawabata Yasunari, incidentally, was the first Japanese to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, for his novel Snow Country.



I am not confident that my translation of ‘A Letter to Kawabata’ is without mistakes. If I can I shall post it here with the original text. If anyone can spot any mistakes, I would be grateful if they let me know.

I dedicate this translation to all the editors and publishers who have stood in my way. And I thank my good friend, Gareth Henderson, wherever he now is, for introducing me to Dazai. I would also like to thank Fukaya Mami for her help with both of the translations below.

A Letter to Kawabata Yasunari

In the September issue of Bungei Shunju you wrote of me disparagingly: “... After all, ‘The Flowers of Buffoonery’ is full of the life and the literary views of its author, but it seems to me that there is an unpleasant cloud surrounding the author’s personal life at present, and, regrettably, this prevents his talent from being expressed as it should be.”

Let us not bandy inept lies. When, standing in the front of a bookshop, I read the words you had written, I was deeply aggrieved. From the way you had written, it was quite as if you alone had decided who should and should not receive the Akutagawa Prize. This was not your writing. Without doubt, someone had made you write this. What is more, you were even exerting yourself to make this obvious.

‘The Flowers of Buffoonery’ is a piece I wrote three years ago, in the summer of my twenty-fourth year. Then, it bore the title, ‘The Sea’. I gave it to my friends, Kon Kani’ichi and Ima Uhei, to read, but compared with the version that exists today it was a very rough piece of work with none of the monologues now belonging to the ‘I’ of the narrative. It was simply the narrative itself – a plain but structurally sound story. That autumn I borrowed Gide’s essay on Dostoyevsky from Akamatsu Gessen, who lived in the neighbourhood, and reading it set me to thinking; I took that primitive – even formal – work of mine, ‘The Sea’, tore it to pieces, and put it back together as a work in which the face of the ‘I’ was to be found everywhere in the text. In this way I believed I had created a work the like of which had not been seen before in Japan; boasting as much, I passed it around my friends. I had my friends Nakamura Chihei and Kubo Ryuuichiro, and also Mr Ibuse, who lived nearby, read it, and it was well received. Encouraged by this, I revised it further. I made deletions and additions, and wrote the whole thing afresh five times before putting it away carefully in a paper bag in the cupboard.

At around New Year this year, my friend Dan Kazuo read this manuscript.

“Hey,” he said, “This is a masterpiece! You must send this to a magazine. I’ll try taking it to Kawabata Yasunari. Kawabata is sure to understand a work like this.”

Soon after that I came to an impasse in my writing. I went on a journey, prepared, in my heart, as it were, to die in the wilderness. This incident caused a little stir.

However much my elder brother berated me, that was fine, I just needed to borrow five hundred yen. And then, I could try again. I returned to Tokyo. Thanks to the trouble taken by my friends, I managed to secure from my brother, for a two or three year period starting then, an allowance of fifty yen a month. Immediately I set about looking for lodgings, but while I was still searching I was stricken with appendicitis and admitted to the Shinohara hospital at Asagaya. Septic pus had seeped into the peritoneum. I had been diagnosed a little too late. I was admitted on the fourth of April, this year. Nakatani Takao came to visit me. Join the Japanese romantic movement, he urged. To celebrate, I shall publish ‘The Flowers of Buffoonery’. These are the matters we discussed. ‘The Flowers of Buffoonery’ was in the possession of Dan Kazuo. I insisted that it would be best if Dan Kazuo took the manuscript to Mr Kawabata. Due to the pain from the incision in my stomach, I was quite unable to move. Then, my lung became infected. For many days I was unconscious. My wife informed me afterwards that the doctor had declared he could no longer take responsibility for my fate. For a full month I lay in the surgical ward, and even to lift my head was a struggle. In May I was transferred to the Kyodo Hospital for internal diseases in Setagaya Ward. I was there for two months. On the first of July the organisation of the hospital was to be changed, all the staff were to be replaced and so on, and as a result, the patients all had to leave. My brother and his acquaintance, a tailor by the name of Kita Hoshiro, discussed the matter and decided to move me to a place in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture. I spent the days collapsed in a rattan chair, taking a light constitutional stroll at morning and evening. Once a week, a doctor came from Tokyo. This state of affairs continued for two months, when, at the end of August, I stood in a bookshop, read a copy of Bungei Shunju, and discovered what you had written: “... an unpleasant cloud surrounding the author’s personal life at present…” etc. etc. To tell the truth, I burned with rage. For many nights I found it hard to sleep on this account.

Is breeding exotic birds and going to see the dance, Mr Kawabata, really such an exemplary lifestyle? I’ll stab him! That is what I thought. The man’s an utter swine, I thought. But then, suddenly, I felt the twisted, hot, passionate love that you bore towards me – a love such as that of Nellie in Dostoyevsky’s The Insulted and the Injured – fill me to my very core. It can’t be! It can’t be! I shook my head in denial. But your love, beneath your affected coldness – violent, deranged, Dostoyevskian love – made my body burn as with fever. And, what’s more, you did not know a thing about it.



I am not attempting to engage in a contest of wits with you. In the words that you wrote I sensed ‘worldly ties’ and smelt the bitter sadness of ‘financial concerns’. I merely wanted to make this known to two or three devoted readers. It is something that I have to make known. We are beginning to doubt that there is beauty in the moral path of subservience.

I think of Kikuchi Kan, wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, grinning and saying, “Well, I suppose it’s better this way. We haven’t lost anything in the end,” and I too smile like a fool. It really is better this way, it seems. I did feel a little sorry for Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, but - what am I talking about? This, too, is part of those ‘worldly ties’.

Mr Ishikawa is an example to us all. In that sense he is dispensing his duties with deep sincerity.

It’s just that I feel dissatisfied. That Kawabata Yasunari tried to assume a casual attitude in his lying, but couldn’t quite cut it – I can’t help being dissatisfied at this. It should not have been this way. It really should not have been this way. You have to be more aware, in your dealings, that a writer lives in the midst of absurdity and imperfection.



川端康成へ

太宰治

　あなたは文藝春秋九月号に私への悪口を書いて居られる。「前略。――なるほど、道化の華の方が作者の生活や文学観を一杯に盛っているが、私見によれば、作者目下の生活に厭（いや）な雲ありて、才能の素直に発せざる憾（うら）みあった。」

　おたがいに下手な嘘はつかないことにしよう。私はあなたの文章を本屋の店頭で読み、たいへん不愉快であった。これでみると、まるであなたひとりで芥川賞をきめたように思われます。これは、あなたの文章ではない。きっと誰かに書かされた文章にちがいない。しかもあなたはそれをあらわに見せつけようと努力さえしている。「道化の華」は、三年前、私、二十四歳の夏に書いたものである。「海」という題であった。友人の今官一、伊馬鵜平（うへい）に読んでもらったが、それは、現在のものにくらべて、たいへん素朴な形式で、作中の「僕」という男の独白なぞは全くなかったのである。物語だけをきちんとまとめあげたものであった。そのとしの秋、ジッドのドストエフスキイ論を御近所の赤松月船氏より借りて読んで考えさせられ、私のその原始的な端正でさえあった「海」という作品をずたずたに切りきざんで、「僕」という男の顔を作中の随所に出没させ、日本にまだない小説だと友人間に威張ってまわった。友人の中村地平、久保隆一郎、それから御近所の井伏さんにも読んでもらって、評判がよい。元気を得て、さらに手を入れ、消し去り書き加え、五回ほど清書し直して、それから大事に押入れの紙袋の中にしまって置いた。今年の正月ごろ友人の檀一雄がそれを読み、これは、君、傑作だ、どこかの雑誌社へ持ち込め、僕は川端康成氏のところへたのみに行ってみる。川端氏なら、きっとこの作品が判るにちがいない、と言った。

　そのうちに私は小説に行きづまり、謂（い）わば野ざらしを心に、旅に出た。それが小さい騒ぎになった。

　どんなに兄貴からののしられてもいいから、五百円だけ借りたい。そうしてもういちど、やってみよう、私は東京へかえった。友人たちの骨折りのおかげで私は兄貴から、これから二三年のあいだ、月々、五十円のお金をもらえることになった。私はさっそく貸家を捜しまわっているうちに、盲腸炎を起し阿佐ヶ谷の篠原病院に収容された。膿（うみ）が腹膜にこぼれていて、少し手おくれであった。入院は今年の四月四日のことである。中谷孝雄が見舞いに来た。日本浪曼派へはいろう、そのお土産として「道化の華」を発表しよう。そんな話をした。「道化の華」は檀一雄の手許（てもと）にあった。檀一雄はなおも川端氏のところへ持って行ったらいいのだがなぞと主張していた。私は切開した腹部のいたみで、一寸もうごけなかった。そのうちに私は肺をわるくした。意識不明の日がつづいた。医者は責任を持てないと、言っていたと、あとで女房が教えて呉（く）れた。まる一月その外科の病院に寝たきりで、頭をもたげることさえようようであった。私は五月に世田谷区経堂の内科の病院に移された。ここに二カ月いた。七月一日、病院の組織がかわり職員も全部交代するとかで、患者もみんな追い出されるような始末であった。私は兄貴と、それから兄貴の知人である北芳四郎という洋服屋と二人で相談してきめて呉れた、千葉県船橋の土地へ移された。終日籐椅子（とういす）に寝そべり、朝夕軽い散歩をする。一週間に一度ずつ東京から医者が来る。その生活が二カ月ほどつづいて、八月の末、文藝春秋を本屋の店頭で読んだところが、あなたの文章があった。「作者目下の生活に厭な雲ありて、云々。」事実、私は憤怒に燃えた。幾夜も寝苦しい思いをした。

　小鳥を飼い、舞踏を見るのがそんなに立派な生活なのか。刺す。そうも思った。大悪党だと思った。そのうちに、ふとあなたの私に対するネルリのような、ひねこびた熱い強烈な愛情をずっと奥底に感じた。ちがう。ちがうと首をふったが、その、冷く装うてはいるが、ドストエフスキイふうのはげしく錯乱したあなたの愛情が私のからだをかっかっとほてらせた。そうして、それはあなたにはなんにも気づかぬことだ。

　私はいま、あなたと智慧（ちえ）くらべをしようとしているのではありません。私は、あなたのあの文章の中に「世間」を感じ、「金銭関係」のせつなさを嗅（か）いだ。私はそれを二三のひたむきな読者に知らせたいだけなのです。それは知らせなければならないことです。私たちは、もうそろそろ、にんじゅうの徳の美しさは疑いはじめているのだ。

　菊池寛氏が、「まあ、それでもよかった。無難でよかった。」とにこにこ笑いながらハンケチで額の汗を拭っている光景を思うと、私は他意なく微笑（ほほえ）む。ほんとによかったと思われる。芥川龍之介を少し可哀そうに思ったが、なに、これも「世間」だ。石川氏は立派な生活人だ。その点で彼は深く真正面に努めている。

　ただ私は残念なのだ。川端康成の、さりげなさそうに装って、装い切れなかった嘘が、残念でならないのだ。こんな筈ではなかった。たしかに、こんな筈ではなかったのだ。あなたは、作家というものは「間抜け」の中で生きているものだということを、もっとはっきり意識してかからなければいけない。

The Joy of Novels

A Writer's Life For Me - The Joy of Novels

To commemorate my annus horibbilis in publishing, I would like to present the first of what I believe will be two translations of short pieces from the pen of Dazai Osamu.

How lucky you are! These works have never been seen in English before, and here they are for your delectation. Now, this is the point at which I am supposed to give a potted biography of Dazai, but, to tell the truth, I just can't be bothered. I'm sure that I couldn't add anything to the countless potted biographies of Dazai that already exist, and, I don't have all the dates and so on straight in my head anyway.

What if I say this: Dazai was the black sheep of Japanese literature. He was a drinker and a womaniser. A legend has built up around him perhaps largely because of his early death by suicide. It was, in fact, a 'lovers' suicide'. I believe he had previously survived two such suicide pacts, leaving behind the corpses of two lovers in the process. As I say, I don't have it all in front of me right now. I can't deny the appeal of the legend, but I am personally more interested in the work. To me, Dazai's most famous novel, No Longer Human, is what The Catcher in the Rye should have been, but failed to be - a true appeal direct from the heart of an outsider, and, despite the title, one of the most human books I have ever read.

Below is a piece from a collection of essays called Mono Omou Ashi, or The Reed that Thinks. The title is a metaphor for human beings. If you think there are mistakes in my translation, please let me know.



The Joy of Novels

Novels have been, from the beginning, the reading matter of women and children. A so-called sensible adult would not read them with any sense of deep involvement, and certainly would never take them so seriously as to bang the table-top with their fists in heated debate after reading. When people say that they have been edified by a novel, humbled by a novel and so on, well, if they are making a joke of some sort, perhaps the conversation might still be of interest, but if they have truly straightened their collar or bowed their head in the presence of a novel, one can only say that this is the act of a lunatic. For example, in some house or other, the wife may be reading a novel, and the husband, standing in front of the mirror and seeing to his tie before going to work, might ask, “What novels are interesting these days?” to which his wife might reply, “I thought Hemmingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls was very interesting, dear.” Fastening the buttons of his waistcoat, the husband then asks, as if humouring a complete imbecile, “What was the plot?” The wife becomes excited and recounts the story in great detail. Moved at her own explanation, she is choked with tears. The husband, pulling on his jacket, says, “Well, that certainly sounds interesting.” Then, that bread-winning husband goes out to work, and in the evening, calling at some salon, speaks thus:

“If we’re talking about contemporary novels, after all, I’d say it has to be Hemmingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

That is precisely how pitiful novels are. The truth is, if you can pull the wool over the eyes of women and children, you’re already a great success. And there are many ways to trick women and children, whether by affecting an air of solemnity, playing the dandy, lying about your distinguished background, spreading out all your paltry learning in display, or shamelessly reporting the unhappiness of your home without a thought to the consequences; and if it is thereby plain as day that you are attempting to manipulate the sympathies of housewives, it does not matter, because then we have those dunces known as critics, who fill their rice bowls by holding this nonsense up as something to be worshipped – it’s enough to make you sick!

There’s one last thing I’d like to say. A long time ago there was a man called Takizawa Bakin. His stories were not very interesting, but, in the introduction to The Satomi Clan and the Eight Dogs, he wrote the following:

“If this work may be of enough interest to keep awake a few women and children, I shall be satisfied.”

And to “keep awake a few women and children” that man lost his eyesight, and even then he did not stop, but continued writing by dictation. Have you ever heard of anything more ridiculous?

No doubt this will seem a superfluous addition, but on one occasion, on a night when I was unable to sleep, I read Toson’s Before Dawn from beginning to end. I read until morning, and then I grew tired. So I tossed that heavy book down next to my pillow and, nodding off, I had a dream. It was a dream that was absolutely and in all parts unconnected with the work I had just read. I heard afterwards that Toson had taken ten years to complete that novel.

A Writer's Life For Me




Last year, 2004, was, for me, something of a Dickensian ‘best of times, worst of times’. My second collection, Morbid Tales, came out in hardback, and garnered a few good reviews. At least one person made predictions as to my future greatness. I quote, because I can, from Douglas Campbell’s review in the magazine All Hallows:

“For all that I’ve picked out more than a dozen allusions and influences, the power of the best stories here is in the way in which Crisp has been able to use his influences to reflect deep within himself and draw out something that is strikingly new. The Buddhist parable of the blind men and the elephant comes to mind: the names I’ve dropped are as big as they are diverse, and I feel I may be trying to describe a talent well on his way to joining them.”

Naturally, I shall not bother to reproduce the less favourable parts of that review. It is sufficient for me to say that I was placed in the company of Mishima Yukio, H. P. Lovecraft and other such literary luminaries. And it was a well-written review, too, which convinces me that this was not hyperbole, whether or not the judgement is eventually borne out by history. Of course, for someone as yet unknown, or little known, to talk in this way about his own work, is insupportably arrogant, but this is a theme that I should perhaps deal with another time.

2004 was the year that more than one person put me in the company of H. P. Lovecraft. It was also the year that I made more attempts to find publishers and agents than ever before. It was also the year that I failed to find any publishers and agents.

The Friends of Arthur Machen send me their journal, Faunus, twice yearly. In the volume for Autumn 2002 there is an excellent article by Edgar Jepson entitled ‘The Gamble of Literature’. The title is an amendment of a phrase that appears in Machen’s ‘The Hill of Dreams’, to wit, “the Adventure of Literature”. In Jepson’s view, ‘gamble’ comes nearer the mark, and I would wholeheartedly agree. I was reminded of this when a friend recently tried to encourage me by likening publication to winning the lottery; it has no closer relation to talent than that. Yes, so literature is a gamble. But imagine a lottery for whose ticket you have sacrificed all hopes of a career, of happiness in love, of a level of material wealth deemed normal by yours peers... That is the price of the particular ticket I have purchased.



For some time I have been thinking of writing a series of articles, perhaps on this blog, perhaps on a completely new blog, under the general, and, needless to say, ironic title of ‘A Writer’s Life For Me’. I suppose the best way to start the series would be with some words of advice for aspiring writers. My advice to aspiring writers would be thus: Give up. Forget it. Why? The reasons are many. First of all, to get a major publisher, you need an agent. For the most part, a publisher will not even read your manuscript unless you have an agent. However, finding an agent is generally agreed to be even harder than finding a publisher. Are you beginning to get a feel of the futility of it now? Let’s say a publisher is considering your novel. You must on no account send it to another publisher at the same time. That, I’m afraid, is bad form, and is frowned upon. Months will pass, at the very least, and not infrequently, years, before you hear the publisher’s verdict, which is, most of the time, a resounding ‘no’. So, now you are free to go to the next publisher and wait another year or so for your next rejection. After a few of these you find Michael Crichton, or some other whore, has already used all the ideas in your novel anyway, and it’s way out of date.

Still want to be a writer?

Well, if you think you can write like Zadie Smith, Nick Hornby or another of those inconsequential media prostitutes, then I would still advise you to give up, first of all, because you probably don’t have the right connections, and secondly, because I just don’t want any more gurus of smugness in the world than there already are.

If you’re not Nick Hornby, if you’re not J. K. Rowling, you will not make money. Most publishers despise writers and think they’re doing you a favour if they publish you. Forget about money. People may buy your books, but little of that money will come your way, if any. Most of those people won’t even read the book. They’ll put it on the shelf and forget about it, making damn sure it never gets read by anyone. Occasionally someone will read it. Occasionally they might even like it. One in a thousand of those that read it and like it might actually write to you and tell you so. Their choice is, sound sycophantic and say they thought it was perfect, or... say they thought it was good, but you could have improved it by doing something that for you would make the whole book pointless.

And remember – there are no groupies for writers. Writers are voyeurs. We are the stalkers of the art world. And our fans are the stalkers of stalkers.

So, you still want to be a writer?

If, after all I have said, you will discard my advice and still want to follow the path of literature, you are, very probably, a TRUE writer. I pity you from the depths of my heart, and it were better that you had never been born.

That is how I would begin my ‘Writer’s Life For Me’ series. But, to tell the truth, I’m already exhausted from a dozen abortive projects, and I don’t think anyone would be interested in this one either.

To celebrate the monumental misery or literary creativity, I have decided, instead, to translate a couple of essays, by one of my favourite writers, Dazai Osamu.

I’m too tired to give a biography here. Why don’t you find out for yourselves?

Floodscape

This evening I attended St Mary’s Church, Twickenham, to listen to a presentation given by Kim Wilkie and organised by the River Thames Society.

It’s been a long time since I’ve sat in church to hear someone speak, but on this occasion I was not listening to a priest. Kim Wilkie was introduced as a landscape architect, the meaning of which phrase soon became clear.

I had gone this evening because of a plain green flyer that came through the letter-box about a week ago, bearing the following words:

PREPARING FOR GLOBAL WARMING

THE THAMES FROM TEDDINGTON TO RICHMOND

The Environment Agency’s Plans for Flood Risk Management

FLOODSCAPE

Etc. etc.

Someone from the River Thames Society gave an introductory speech, and mention was made, appropriately enough, since the setting was a church and the theme was flood, of Noah. The difference between Noah and ourselves, however, is that Noah knew what he was going to have to deal with. We must work by guesswork.

I did not know this before but this was the very church in which Alexander Pope was buried. In fact, he was beneath Kim Wilkie’s feet as he gave his power point presentation.



There was an Apple computer and a projector screen. Alexander Pope, Mr. Wilkie told us, had termed this stretch of the Thames "London’s Arcadia". His presentation was to outline a plan to protect this stretch of river from the kind of flooding that can now be expected with climate change. That climate change is taking place, he said, is now unquestionable.

He showed us a number of ‘slides’ revealing much of the work that had already been done to restore the area to the beauty that it had known as London’s Arcadia. In truth, as he showed, the area has not been so badly spoilt by development. In fact, an act of Parliament passed in 1902 has protected the area from advertising hoardings, housing developments and so on. Much of the work he has already done here, as a landscape architect, has involved removing unsightly modern fences and so on. He showed us, too, Turner's view of the river from Richmond Hill, and a photograph of the modern view.




But for the future, the very shape of the river bank must be changed. Rather than erecting walls and barriers, which would only exacerbate the problem, it was shaping the river bank to smooth the flow of water and prevent it from building up in the wrong places, that was the most effective, the most aesthetic and the most economical way to tackle the problem.



This, in fact, he pointed out, was simply a reversion to the method that has been used in this area historically. This area is prone to flooding. The lane outside the church is called Flood Lane. There is a mark upon the stone wall of the church, too, showing how high the waters from the river rose in the 18th Century. To cope with these floods, people had made use of ‘flood plains’ around the river for centuries.

I found myself quite moved by the presentation, though not because of any conspicuous emotive language. Mr. Wilkie’s plans seemed elegant and practical. If they receive the necessary backing, the project may provide an example for similar projects across the Capital, and across Europe.

One thing that stayed with me was that someone seemed to care about the beauty of this area, and that caring in this way was not at odds with practicality. Beauty, practicality and economy can and should merge. Instead of building walls, we must work with the flow of the flood. The flood, after all, may come tomorrow. We cannot shut it out forever.

Ah... Q is Here


I feel like the only person awake in the whole world.

I've discovered an interesting little blog here

What curious, sad and lonely creature can be responsible for it, I wonder?

Feed The Cock - Tuppence a Bag

This morning I received a little package through my letterbox. I did not know it at first, but wrapped in its brown envelope, this was nothing other than The Cock.

Yes, folks, it seems The Cock's first EP, Tuppence is now on general release, if that is the correct term. Please order your copy here.

Or possibly here

It is currently on repeat play on my so-called 'stereo blaster thing', and it can only be described, in terms of its aural quality, as 'majestic'. Well, perhaps, 'good' and 'nice' also come close. Why don't you find out for yourselves?

The End of the Internet

THE END OF THE INTERNET

Gothic Literature - A Brief Outline of the History and Associations of the Word 'Gothic'

Gothic literature has been a fascination of mine since boyhood, so it was inevitable that I should jot down some thoughts upon the subject sooner or later. Since those thoughts are both nebulous and extensive, I doubt I can make a definitive statement of them at this time in my life, when I am distracted by many things. For that reason, I should like to reshape some simple pedagogical materials I have previously prepared for the classroom and hope that this may provide an outline of the subject matter that is not entirely redundant and that contains something of my feeling for the genre.



First of all, my relationship with the Gothic is that of both insider and outsider. When I discovered Gothicism I recognised some deep part of myself within it, but at the same time, recognised its remoteness and exoticism. I never really attempted to study the subject until relatively late in thirty two years of my existence so far. Instead, being the dreamer that I am, I merely allowed my imagination to play with the associations that the literature, and the word ‘Gothic’ itself provided me. For some reason the word ‘Gothic’ seems particularly resonant with association. To a degree, it is almost preferable for me simply to daydream on the word itself rather than to sample the often flawed productions of the genre; such is the dense power of association the word possesses. When we look at that word’s history we may find that some of it corresponds with those associations in a way that almost seems to argue for the reality of race memory. Some of it, however, is strange and counterintuitive. This phenomenon corresponds with my feeling of being at once an insider and an outsider to the genre. In any case, it is the history of the word and its associations that I wish to explore briefly here.

The word ‘Goth’ derives originally from certain Germanic tribes who made attacks on the Roman Empire between the 3rd and 5th centuries AD. Since Rome and Greece were the seat of civilisation, the people of Northern Europe were considered barbarians. Indeed, the words ‘Goth’ and ‘Gothic’ have become synonymous with barbarism.

You may also be familiar with the word ‘Gothic’ as an architectural term. Gothic architecture was prevalent in Western Europe between the 12th and 16th centuries. The style is best known for the pointed-arch that was a feature of Gothic churches.

Gothic literature, however, has little to do with Gothic architecture. In literature, the word ‘Gothic’ refers to a mode of fiction dealing with supernatural or horrifying events. At least, that is the dictionary definition. However, if we look more closely we will find that not all Gothic literature is concerned with the supernatural, and not all Gothic literature is horrifying. Rather, the term ‘Gothic’ as applied to literature refers to a kind of atmosphere or aesthetic that, while it is hard to define, may be understood at an instinctive level, in a way similar to that in which Japanese terms such as ‘wabi’ and ‘sabi’ are also hard to define, but are immediately evocative to someone with the right cultural background.

Gothic literature is generally believed to have begun in the year 1765 with the publication of The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole. It should be noted that this novel was published in the 18th century, after the philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment had attempted to bring reason to the world, and to banish superstition. The Castle of Otranto, therefore, was consciously written, in an almost post-modern manner, as a means of recapturing the atmosphere of a barbaric past; Horace Walpole made use of the superstitions of the past, without believing in them, as a means of freeing the imagination. Walpole himself, again using a literary device that to our eyes may appear post-modern, presented the novel as a manuscript he had merely discovered and translated, writing of it in his introduction as follows:

…[this] work can only be laid before the public at present as a matter of entertainment. Even as such, some apology for it is necessary. Miracles, visions, necromancy, dreams, and other preternatural events, are exploded now even from romances. That was not the case when our author wrote; much less when the story itself is supposed to have happened. Belief in every kind of prodigy was so established in those dark ages, that an author would not be faithful to the manners of the time who should omit mention of them. He is not bound to believe them himself, but he must represent his actors as believing them.

The title of the novel also gives us a clue to some of the essential elements of Gothic literature. The key word here is ‘castle’. For Gothic literature often focuses on huge and ancient buildings such as castles. Those ancient buildings may be viewed as symbolic of the unique atmosphere of Gothic literature; the writing style of Gothic novels is as heavy as castle masonry, and as gloomy as the maze-like corridors of such a mediaeval building.



Chris Baldick, in his introduction to The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales, has suggested that Edgar Allan Poe marks a turning point in the Gothic genre; before ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, he says, the keynote of Gothic fiction was cruelty, after, it was decay. In both cases the atmosphere is one of oppression and anxiety. Cruelty was part of the Gothic castle because of the dungeons where kidnapped damsels were imprisoned by evil monks or scheming Italian counts. In these dungeons all manner of unspeakable tortures were carried out. Decay was part of the castle because of its terrible age. I would add here that, although when I first read Baldick’s theory, it seemed to make intuitive sense to me – since I associated Gothicism with decay rather than the violence that one usually finds in what is simply called ‘horror’, and since I was surprised to discover the extent of the actual violence in early Gothic tales – I have come to wonder whether his theory is not based purely on personal impression. That is, both violence and decay seem to play a large part in Gothic literature before and after Poe. If this is true, then why does Baldick’s theory seem so intuitively correct? This is an interesting question that I feel is worth exploring further, but I lack the time and resources to do such at present. This, no doubt, is an area to be expanded upon if I live to write the extended version of this essay.



Although the original barbarian tribes known by the name ‘Goth’ were associated with Northern Europe, it is interesting to note that many Gothic writers set their tales in Southern Europe. In The Castle of Otranto, for instance, it is an Italian prince who schemes to avert the curse brought on his family when his grandfather usurped the principality of Otranto. For the writers of these early Gothic tales, Southern Europe is now the source of barbarism. One reason for this is probably the fact that most Gothic writers were Protestant. Catholicism was seen as a superstitious form of Christianity, and therefore closer to barbarism. In fact, in his introduction, Walpole fictitiously claims of the manuscript that:

[it] was found in the library of an ancient catholic family in the north of England… The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of christianity…

This distrust of Catholicism can be seen in later Gothic works, such as The Monk, by Matthew Lewis, and Melmoth the Wanderer, by Charles Maturin, both of which feature evil Catholic monks who imprison innocent maidens in the darkest cells of their monasteries. Although some people (professor Edith Birkhead being one of them) believe Gothic fiction to have ended with Melmoth the Wanderer, the same anti-Catholic theme may even be seen in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’, which depicts the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition. In fact, Poe, who came after Charles Maturin – the latter of whom professor Birkhead named "the greatest as well as the last of the Goths" – is quite possibly the writer whom most readers today would fist associate with the term ‘Gothic’.

After Matthew Lewis and Charles Maturin, other famous writers in the Gothic tradition are Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights, H. P. Lovecraft and Mervyn Peake.

Looking at the list of writers above, we may begin to see how inadequate the dictionary definition of Gothic literature is. The supernatural plays no part in Shelley’s Frankenstein, for instance. In fact, Frankenstein may also be considered an early work of science fiction. In that sense it represents a development in the Gothic genre. H. P. Lovecraft brought about another such shift in the genre by abandoning all notions of a Christian god and the battle between good and evil; he represented the universe as being ruled by forces entirely alien to mankind. Often decayed Gothic buildings appear in his stories, but it is the atmosphere and use of language that are Gothic, rather than the technical details of the content. Lovecraft’s brand of fiction has also been called ‘cosmic horror’.



Mervyn Peake is another writer whose work is Gothic without adhering to the dictionary definition of that term. For there are no supernatural events in the Gormenghast trilogy that form Peake’s most famous work, and though some of the episodes in the three books are horrifying, horror is not an outstanding feature of the stories. Gormenghast, in true Gothic tradition, does have a vast decaying castle – the Gormenghast of the title – but this fact aside, it is only really the inherited aesthetic, the oppressive atmosphere and the writing style that makes Peake’s work Gothic.

Of course, whether or not such writers fall technically within the confines of the Gothic genre is a matter of debate, and since some declare the Gothic genre to have finished with Melmoth the Wanderer, presumably they would also deny that the works of Lovecraft or Peake are Gothic. Yet who today can read ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ or Titus Groan and not be tempted to attach the epithet ‘Gothic’ to these works? As I stated at the outset, the word ‘Gothic’ works by way of deep instinctive associations that are hard to define. Perhaps a study could be devised whereby new readers were asked to classify a variety of writers with single words. In such a case, my guess is that readers’ subjective responses could be found to be empirically consistent, for whatever reason, on the matter of the Gothic nature of certain works not recognised by many scholars as Gothic.

As to whether the Gothic tradition still exists today, I would say that it does. The most obvious heir to the throne in the crumbling castle of the Gothic is the American writer Thomas Ligotti. He follows H. P. Lovecraft in depicting a universe that is, from the point of view of humanity, entirely evil. He deals in the supernatural with a writing style that is heavy and oppressive, and he has a fascination with decay.

In one of his most recent tales, My Work is Not Yet Done, the hero, who spends much time in photographing derelict, decaying buildings, states that:

…I was seeking… the sabi of things utterly dejected and destitute, alone and forgotten – whatever was submitting to its essential impermanence, its transitory nature, whatever was teetering on the brink of non-existence…

Although I am not aware that Ligotti has described himself as Gothic, I do know that he has place Edgar Allan Poe squarely within the Gothic tradition, and placed himself squarely within the tradition of Poe and Lovecraft.

It seems that The Castle of Otranto has cast a long shadow, which extends to the present day. The Gothic genre has shifted from an emphasis on superstition and cruelty, to an emphasis on decay, to an emphasis on cosmic horror. I await future developments with keen interest.