Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

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...