Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

From Here to Obscurity

Not long ago I announced that my short story, 'Sado-ga-shima', is now available from Rainfall as a chapbook. Well, that is now most definitely true, since I have received my author's copies of the book this AM.

I'm actually very pleased with it. It's a quirky and rather elegant little thing.

There are illustrations from Bret Jordan throughout, and the serried typeface, for some reason or no reason at all, looks good to me.



Many thanks to John B. Ford and Bret Jordan for this. It's not a typical horror story, or a story easy to categorise at all, and I'm chuffed to have it put out in this form. I do feel a little like a musician who has been working very hard on a piece that's kind of understated but difficult to play (a musician's piece), and managed to pull it off. I certainly don't want to overstate the case, because this is no blockbuster, but I feel a tiny little bit like, say, David Bowie after making Low, knowing pretty well that it will take some people a few years to realise he's made one of the pivotal albums of the seventies.

But no, perhaps that's too much of an overstatement. Let me put it this way then, I feel a tiny bit like Morrissey, sneaking one of the best songs he's ever written, Michael's Bones onto a B-side, with no album release (well, it appeared on a compilation later, inevitably).

I shouldn't have said that really, should I? That's for others to decide. Anyway, that's how I feel.

Only a hundred copies of this available, so it probably won't be around for long. And nor will I.

Labels: Quentin S. Crisp, Sado-ga-shima