Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Mephistopheles and the Modern Man

I think it's time I came out of my 'closet' (where I spend my days with numerous skeletons).

Have you ever had that experience where someone, for example, starts talking to you in a pub or somewhere and assumes you have the same beliefs as they do? A friend of mine once told me the story of how, whilst in Japan, he was approached by some American jock who extended his hand and said, "Hi, my name's Brad, and I hate fags. What state are you from?" (Why are they always called 'Brad'?)

To which my friend replied, "I'm from the one attached to France by a tunnel", and was accused, hilariously, of having "bad attitude".

Okay, so you understand the kind of situation I mean.

I find myself constantly in that situation, but not with regard to racism or homophobia. I don't know what it is about me - I suppose I have an air of mixed intellectualism and existential angst or something - but people always seem to assume I am an atheist. I'm not, okay? Please don't approach me with the assumption that I share your beliefs; it's embarrassing for both of us. The fact is, I really, really dislike talking about my 'beliefs' when I'm face to face with people, and only really do it selectively in writing. So, most of the time, when people assume I'm atheist (which they always do) I just nod along with them. I'm sure it's not the intention of the other person (??), but I always feel browbeaten in such situations. How is it, I wonder, that someone who professes to have no beliefs is so very confident in their beliefs that they will talk to me like this and steamroller any opinons I might have? The more they talk, going into great detail about what pernicious and deluded fools people are not to be atheists, the less inclined I am to confess that I am one of those pernicious and deluded fools. Look, talk to me by all means, but just don't assume I'm an atheist. You can think I'm an idiot or a lunatic for not being an atheist, if you like, as I've noticed atheists always do, but just don't assume I'm atheist. Is that okay?

I'm sure there will be many people now who immediately assume that I'm a Christian - that's the kind of world we live in. Not an atheist? When did you find God?

No, I'm not a Christian, either. Confusing, eh? Does not compute.

I'll tell you what confuses me - it's how people who can't understand others being comfortable with the restrictions of a label such as 'Christian', nevertheless feel comfortable with the label 'atheist'.



One reason I really, really don't like talking about my 'beliefs' as such, is that I don't really have beliefs. I have feelings and hopes and inclinations, but I'm pretty sure I know absolutely nothing. Another reason is, I know very well that I will be misunderstood.

For instance, some time back, I wrote somewhere on one of these blogs a kind of critique of science. Now, my good blogging friend, Lokutus Prime, seemed to take that to mean that I would like science eradicated from the world. That certainly had not been my intended meaning at the time. However, I'm beginning to wonder. I think that, if I have time, I should like to write a series of posts here about science and why I think it's crucial that its intellectual hegemony MUST be challenged.

Some time ago, my second collection of short stories, Morbid Tales, was reviewed by someone who made a number of erroneuous assumptions about my influences. He deduced wrongly, for instance, the influence of Arthur Machen in a story called 'Far-Off Things'. He also seemed to think that I was influenced by Robert Aickman. This was impossible, in fact, because I had not even read any Robert Aickman at the time. I have now. I started reading him just this week. I have the collected stories in two volumes, as recently published by Tartarus Press.

At the beginning of the first volume there is a short essay by the author, apparently written on request "upon winning the award for Best Short Work for 'Pages from a Young Girl's Journal' at the First World Fantasy Awards".

I found this essay quite moving, if that is the correct word. At any rate, something in it struck a deep chord in me. I quote from the second paragraph:

I believe that at the time of the Industrial and French revolutions (I am not commenting upon the American one!), mankind took a wrong turning. The beliefs that one day, by application of reason and the scientific method, everything will be known, and every problem and unhappiness solved, seem to me to have led to a situation where, first, we are in danger of destroying the whole world, either with a loud report or by insatiable overconsumption and overbreeding, and where, second, everyone suffers from an existentialist angst, previously confined to the very few. There is a fundamental difference between worrying where one's next meal is coming from and worrying about the quality and reality of one's basic being. The great prophetic work of the modern world is Goethe's Faust, so little appreciated among the Anglo-Saxons. Mephistopheles offers Faust unlimited knowledge and unlimited power in exchange for his soul. Modern man has accepted that bargain.

The words have for me something of the power of someone's dying words. In fact they were written in 1976, five years before Robert Aickman's death in 1981. There is about these words a clarity both terrible and calm, as of someone who sees simply what is important and knows what he must say before he passes into the realm of shadows.

I am reminded, for some reason, of Dennis Potter's Cold Lazarus, the last screenplay he wrote before his death, written in the knowledge that he was dying. In it a writer, played by Albert Finney, has his head cryogenically frozen in the hope that he will be brought back to life in the future. He is, indeed, brought back to life, in a future where England in nothing but a concreted-over annexe of America, and the head of a media empire wants the writer's head in order to exploit the memories in his brain tissue as fodder for virtual reality.



Indeed, it is the writer's memories that are the most precious thing of all in a world where everything else of value has been concreted over. Finally, the writer pleads with one of the scientists, in whose keeping he is, to let him die. He spirals down a tunnel of light into the memories of his childhood, whether to find eternity or oblivion we do not know.

I have no hope in the future. I do not wish to live to see a world of nanotechnology, virtual reality, genetic modification, cloning and so on and so forth. I am simply waiting for the tunnel of light to take me back to memories of my childhood in the Devon countryside, when I did not know how lucky I was.