Leyburn, UK; Tartarus Press; 2004. 1st edition hardcover. Fine in fine dj. In these eight immaculately realised strange stories, Quentin S. Crisp delves deep into the decadence of contemporary life. Springing from the beauties of love and despair, the tales range from the melancholy betrayal of 'Autumn Colours', to the elegiac love and violence of 'The Tattooist'; from the seductive horror of 'Cousin X', to the warped, heady eroticism of 'The Mermaid'; from the wistful fantasy of 'Far-Off Things' to the more worldly wish-fulfilment of 'The Two-Timer'; and from the supernatural mystery of 'A Lake', to the paradoxical perfection of 'Ageless'. The fresh originality of the tales and their settings: an English country garden in 'Cousin X'; contemporary Japan in 'A Lake': is matched by the elegance of the writing. They are unified, perhaps, by a yearning for the achingly perfect, ecstatic moment. As Mark Samuels points out in his Foreword, Crisp's fiction is '. . . too multi-layered, too individual, to be labelled. One can spot influences here and there, a dash of this and a sprinkling of that, but the end result is much greater than the sum of its parts.' Quentin S. Crisp was born in North Devon, England. After school, he worked for five years as an actor and stage manager, and played bass guitar for the band, The Dead Bell. In 1996 he entered Durham University and as part of his degree course spent a year in Japan. He then taught and studied in Taiwan, and was awarded a scholarship to research the works of Higuchi Ichiyou at Kyoto University. Quentin now lives on the outskirts of London and shares his life with his gardenia, Esmerelda, and his Japanese ceramics. His first collection of short stories, The Nightmare Exhibition, was published in 2001. Morbid Tales is a sewn hardback book of 226 pages. Limited to 300 copies. OUT OF PRINT. 2 COPIES AVAILABLE. |