Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone

I'm moving. My room currently looks as though it has been invaded by a particularly vindictive burglar. Soon I will be gone, but before that happens this room has to look pristine. So I'm very busy, in the very melancholy and stressful way that moving makes one busy. So, if you're waiting to hear from me, well, that's probably why you haven't heard from me yet.

The other day I popped into a certain second-hand bookshop in London, because I happened to be passing, and I said hello and was given a nice cup of tea. I'm generally a conversationally disadvantaged person, but after a while a conversation with one of the staff got underway, about the way in which many writers are known only for one or two works when they wrote a great deal - this had been prompted by the fact I'd noticed a volume by M.P. Shiel on the shelves, with a title I had never heard of. I think it was something like Lord of the Ocean. On the same shelves I noticed a copy of The Pillow Friend by Lisa Tuttle. I remarked that Lisa had written the introduction to my next book, and there was some discussion then of her work. I took the book of the shelf and looked at the price. It was twelve pounds, which, to someone like me, is a lot of money. I had read Lost Futures and Memories of the Body by Tuttle, and enjoyed them both very much, but I had not read this.



Eventually, I decided it was time for me to ramble on, as Robert Plant might have said, although not to find the queen of all my dreams, but to find lunch at a nice greasy spoon. I looked at the copy of The Pillow Friend I had placed back on the shelf. What the hell! I thought. This books wants to be read, and it wants to be read by me. I took it to the front desk and laid out the cash.

Then I left the shop. As I was walking down the road I saw another of the staff from the shop coming my way. Apparently he had just come from a late lunch himself. He stopped on the pavement and we chatted for a while. He spoke about the state of the book business. "The bookshop is dying," he said, "Publishers, bookshops and writers are all finding it hard to survive at the moment, because no one really wants to pay the kind of money for books that will keep them going." He spoke of how the Internet has driven book prices down, how bookshops have been closing one after another. Then he asked me how I was doing. As if to prove him right I told him that I was moving, because I can no longer afford to live in London. He commiserated with me and asked what I am going to do now. This is a question I have been asking myself. How will I continue to survive? I really don't know. At least, anyway, I will have a roof over my head. But who would want to be a writer now, when the world of books, and perhaps the world itself, is coming to an end.



We went our separate ways. I popped into an Ecuadorian greasy spoon and ordered a vegetarian full English breakfast, for my late lunch. I looked at my new purchase. I have got into the habit of reading so many books at once that I have instituted a policy of not starting any new books until I have finished reading a certain number, so I thought it would be a while before I could start reading this. But then I thought, what the hell, this book wants to be read, and it wants to be read by me, so I opened it and started reading.

There are few things in my life of which I am proud. I'm not proud of the fact that I'm socially inept, or that I've never had much money, or that I am so judgemental of people, or that, like a baby, still-born, or a beast with his horn, I have torn everyone who reached out for me, or that I have consistenly failed to seize the day (despite the fact that I should obviously be immensely proud of all these things). But if there is one thing I am proud of, it's the fact that I have never compromised in my writing. If I succeed at this, it will have been entirely on my own terms, and I will be able to count it a true victory. But I haven't succeeded yet. I am not recognised by the world as a writer sufficiently that I don't have to give any further account of myself. I have to justify my existence by doing other work, too. Some writers are able to work full-time and still write wonderful stories. In fact, I'm fairly sure that most of them simply have to. I honestly don't know how they do it. Having tried this myself, I have nothing but the utmost respect for such people. Unfortunately, I don't seem to be one of them. I remember now when I was in Japan, I had a conversation with a girl there that has proved highly prophetic. She asked what I would do when I returned to England. I said that I supposed I would have to work. She replied that she couldn't imagine me working. "Sugoku maipeesu na kanji," she said; "There's an incredible 'my own pace' feel about you." I have been working - but I am reminded very often that I do the work much slower than everyone else. I do really seem to be on a different time-track. My current work - a decision I made in order to make it possible for me to write - is part-time. But it does not pay my living expenses.



The future looks extremely uncertain to me. Perhaps I shouldn't be so proud of my lack of compromise in my writing. I actually think I'm incapable of compromise. And without compromise, the likelihood of me being able to make a living is reduced drastically. I sometimes think that my writing will be sufficiently recognised to support me the very moment that my miserable existence comes to an end. You know, death is a great career move and all that.

Speaking of death, these days I try to remind myself as often as I can that I could die at any time, so I'd better be satisfied with my life just as it is. Some people might anticipate another clause to that sentence: "I'd better be satisfied with my life just the way it is, or change it now." But the truth is, I don't really think I can change my life; I just don't seem to be a carpe diem sort of person. Or rather, I think the only possible way for me to change my life is through contemplation of death and acceptance. In fact, usually when I think of death, I feel ready to go. I feel like, yes, I did it my way, even if I have totally fucked things up. However, one thing keeps me going. I still haven't written enough. It's not to do with quantity so much, though partly. I just know that I haven't acheived my full potential in my writing yet. My brain truly is teeming, and my ideas for stories seem as numerous as stars in the sky. And one day, I feel, I will write something that magically comes off the page like nothing that's been written before. Perhaps I will never get there, but I do think that I am getting better and better as a writer all the time.



I think that in some ways I used to be more tolerant of what I see as bad taste. Now it seems to me criminal and corrosive. To vote for trash with your money is just one of the many ways to make the world a worse place. I would like to discourage it. For myself, I don't see the point of reading a book that's too popular. (I don't mean to imply that everything popular is trash, though that seems to be the general rule.) For instance, J.K. Rowling has enough readers already. She doesn't need me. I want to make sure that those endangered works are kept from extinction by having a home in the consciousness of one more human being - me.

Anyway, this is just a status report, really. You'll miss me when I'm gone. There are people I'll miss, too. There are, in fact, certain people I miss right now. I hope we get the time to get together. I hope that we can reflect on the fact we could die at any moment and still feel satisfied with who we have been and who we are.

This article is interspersed with Youtube clips that have been amusing or otherwise fascinating me lately.