Quentin S. Crisp

I've mentioned it before, but I actually have a huge amount of unpublished material. Partly this is my own fault, in that I need to revise stuff to get it into fit shape to send anywhere. The problem is, once the impelling forced that pushed one to finish a novel - say - is spent, the world tugs at one's sleeve with many hands, saying, "Fill in this form! Pay this bill! Answer this correspondence!" Anything, in fact, except revise one's novel.

At the moment I am not sure I want anything more than to break this pattern of finishing novels that then gather dust by finding a mid-list home for my latest finished novel, Graves, but I can become very despondent even thinking about this, as I've never been very good at the sales and promotion side of things (as might well be imagined, I don't have an agent). Anyway, the point is, I think one decent break would make all the difference (perhaps that's a naive view) in allowing me to make more of my work more available more of the time.

Another way of putting this is: the future is uncertain.

Anyway, I seem to keep on writing and perhaps one day - with the indispensable help of readers and publishers - I'll even do more than muddle disastrously through.

(I shall post more news here as I have it, though will try to be sparing by not posting minor news.)
 
I found myself clicking the wrong things due to my laptop's touch pad being smeared, and ended up reading Quentin's story Suicide Watch in this forum's Repository section. I found it to be emotionally cogent and well written, with me reading it in one sitting and my attention never wavering. Best thing I've read by mistake in weeks.
 
The Boy Who Played With Shadows arrived today and looks very impressive. I got copy 31 of 85 and was told there were only 5 left when I ordered it on 23rd June.
 
Robin Davies said:
The Boy Who Played With Shadows arrived today and looks very impressive. I got copy 31 of 85 and was told there were only 5 left when I ordered it on 23rd June.
Click to expand...

And I am now told that copies have sold out from the publisher, but there will still be, as I understand it, copies for sale from Ziesings and Fantastic Literature. Cold Tonnage will have some copies, but I believe they're all spoken for.

Anyway, as usual, I'll try and limit my postings here, but will update with news as seems necessary.
 
I've just finished reading this, and really enjoyed the combination of memoir and thought-provoking meditation on weird fiction. I hope it gets a reprint in a future collection because it deserves to be read by more than 85 people.

The reminiscence about Quentin's father's reaction to Lovecraft raised a smile. I remember when I was in the first flush of Lovecraftolatry I tried to persuade my mother to read his work. I loaned her my Panther paperback of The Haunter of the Dark (with the Ian Miller cover) and, after struggling with The Outsider, she returned it saying "I can't get into it." I was too young and stupid to realise that a Catherine Cookson reader wasn't likely to be the most receptive audience for HPL at his most morbid...
 
Only just avoided missing this. Dan sent the tracking number early this morning--I will make room to read it as soon as it arrives.
 
gveranon said:
I've been haunting bookseller sites for the past several days, and finally sighted the rare beast at Fantastic Literature. I already have a confirmation that my order has been dispatched. It looks like Fantastic Literature still has at least one copy:

THE BOY WHO PLAYED WITH SHADOWS - limited edition
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I just finished my review of it here, where I claim this personal work Is essential reading for anyone interested in horror and weird fiction.

Iaiaiii! Shub-Niggurath!
 
"One early piece of writing I remember [...], was a tale in which my pet toad, Goosepimple, was anthropomorphised into a superhero of the woodland world" (The Boy Who Played With Shadows, p. 21).

Incidentally, there is a small story arch in Walter Simonson's run on The Mighty Thor where Thor becomes a superhero in the woodland (or, rather, park) world as the "Frog of Thunder", having been transformed into a frog by the intrigues of Loki.

frogthor.jpg
 
I don't know if anyone is planning to be at the Zócalo Book Fair in Mexico City this month, but if so, I'll be there for a few days from about the 8th or 9th. There's a book launch there for an anthology called Sombra del árbol de la noche, which I'm in, so I shall certainly be at that launch, among other places. So please come and say hello, if you're not feeling socially phobic.
 
Might have, but being slightly disconnected I didn't find out it happened until I saw some photos from the Chomu Press facebook feed. Made me want to kick myself. So, next time? Funnily enough, just earlier I was telling a friend my life motto could be "another day, maybe."

Anyway, I really looked up this thread to say that, in my usually late fashion, I've finally been making my way through All God's Angels Beware! and Defeated Dogs, both of which were brought to me from Canada by a relative studying there. It's taking time because life events (and, I must admit, other books) keep getting in the way. But so far both volumes have been brilliant, in different ways. "Ynys-y-Plag" is one of the best stories I've read in quite some time. And I really liked "The Gay Wolf", namely that introspective interlude it breaks into and which I found highly relatable. I think I'd be a perfect Mesmer Tower tenant.

Interesting that those stories very much represent the two aspects (not that your work can be reduced only to these two) that make me appreciate your work, Quentin. From the first, your skills for description and mood-building; often I complain that writers tend to "describe too much" when they don't have much to say, but in your work it, well, it doesn't feel natural but rather is the work, as the commonplace expression goes "painting images" inside the reader's head; or evoking rather than painting (I think that what's evoked can be more powerful than what is described). And the other aspect is that introspective element, those texts that read like personal confession rather than storytelling—though they're both. This is perhaps because I can relate to the feelings of sadness and alienation expressed therein. To me those passages are the "this is exactly how I feel but didn't know how to put it into words" sort, which can be quite rare. That they happen often in your fiction is a bittersweet treat.

Still many stories to go. Anyone finds themselves reading this, I really can't recommend Quentin's books enough.
 
I've just finished (and enjoyed) reading Erith, which prompted me to explore the area a bit on Google maps. The map in the book is presumably quite old because it doesn't quite match the current one. This reminded me a bit of Iain Sinclair's Dark Lanthorns which describes his psychogeographic excursions following the directions in an old, waterlogged, annotated A-Z of London:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Lanthorns-Rodinskys--Z-Sinclair/dp/1870507940/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449332105&sr=1-1&keywords=iain+sinclair+dark+lanthorns
Like Des, I identified with the bit about floaters because my eyes unleashed fresh shoals of them earlier this year. As recommended I got my eyes checked out and there is no serious damage but they are horribly distracting. And I too feel a bit nervous when I accidentally catch a glimpse of that grainy red laser light in supermarket checkouts - but they must be safe... mustn't they???
 
I am very curious about Erith, since I have been enjoying QSC's work and literary progression since his very first collection. Unfortunately it is even by small press standards a luxury edition - I hope a paperback or ebook will eventually see the day.
Meanwhile I have Blue on Blue incoming - curious about it !
Edit: scrolling up I now see that that I was unaware of The Boy who played with Shadows. Another QSC title to check if it is eventually e-ified.
 
I just read Blue on Blue and Erith. Both could be called metaphysical fantasies, and both are uniquely Q. S. Crispian (no one else could have written them), but otherwise they are strikingly dissimilar. At the risk of being glib and reductive, I'll claim that Blue on Blue is Platonist in its metaphysics (although more in love with instantiation than with universality, the latter serving to add glamor, dimension, meaning, and mystery to the former, and the latter also being both creative and snowily dispersive), while Erith explores the borderland between an Anglo-Saxon paganism and a violently ambivalent, variously hopeful, doomy, and defiantly heretical almost-Christianity, in sometimes dreary and sometimes alluring settings of suburban London. Another dissimilarity: Blue on Blue is a very finished literary artifact (those who think Gene Wolfe is the finest prose stylist and most meticulous fabricator in contemporary fantasy should read this book), while Erith is looser and more tentative, though perhaps also more experimental and profound. Erith reminded me at times of the anti-novelistic investigations of Michel Butor (e.g., Passing Time). Both books contain words that were previously unknown to me; I wish I had made a list, which would have been evocative in itself. Also, Blue on Blue contains a lengthy passage late in the book that is so audacious (yet so brilliant, paragraph by paragraph, and perfect for the book) that I felt like laughing out loud. I did not see that coming. I don't want to say anything further, except that this multi-page passage surpasses Updike (another stylist) on one of Updike's favorite subjects.
 
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Erith is a compelling study of inner and outer geography. The description of the drab and semi-derelict Thames-side town is precisely observed, unerringly finding the things that represent larger truths about the place. But it is not simply a slice of urban noir: the author finds mystery, even the mystical, in the unlikeliest scenes: a tree at the end of a subway ramp, a hidden and closed church, the sweep of a staircase in a forlorn civic building.

Alongside these outer landscapes, however, he also conveys an inner terrain of mood and emotion with unflinching integrity. In unpromising circumstances, there are passages of dejection and bewilderment, the more telling because they are told with quiet objectivity. But the book also records moments which, as he says, if not exactly of epiphany or revelation, still seem to offer some form of assuaging.

The way in which the book balances these two elements is subtle and unforced. The writing is so good that even the bus and train timetables are made to seem significant, their uncertainty charged with meaning.

I'm not sure if comparisons help for a writer so individual, but certainly the psychogeography of Iain Sinclair and the attention to the unregarded of Robert Walser might hint at the qualities in the book.
 
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