The Naked Civil Servant

I first became aware of the name Quentin Crisp in the mid 1970’s when I saw ‘The Naked Civil Servant’ on television. Played excellently by John Hurt this character has always stuck in my mind.

When I saw the book on the shelf at the local charity shop I felt drawn to read it, to gain insight into the man, whose character I had only had a glimpse of many years ago.

The autobiography is an interesting read. Quentin Crisp lived his life on his own terms. His fame only really came in old age - an interesting message there

Crisp is a more or less self-avowed narcissist, and not as witty as he thinks he is, but it's impossible not to admire his cojones and his embodiment of "be yourself, no matter who you are". He's also in the true lineage of English eccentrics, not so much because of who he was (had he been born 80 years later he'd never have risen from obscurity) but because of who he was when he was. Spending time in his autobiographical company isn't exactly pleasant, but I'm still glad I did.

I did struggle with the style. Whimsical, sometimes pedantic, it nonetheless highlighted what is most beautiful about this book: its vulnerability, authenticity and stark reality it portrays, Crisp reminds us the horrible prejudice, harm and disdain the LGBTQ community endured - and endures stil today in numerous parts of the world.

This is a practical guide on how to write a living eulogy of your Self, as though it is a martyr pretending to something else.

Crisp's wit and intelligence is his saving grace in this, his autobiography written in the middle of his life, but his despondent attitude constantly leaned me to think him a whiner. His seemingly inadvertent bravery in coming out as homosexual in the 1920s is more than remarkable, and he even stood up for in a court case where policemen accused him for attempting to prostitute himself; the case was dismissed.

Crisp's writing is at times essential and a great example of intelligence and humor intertwined, e.g.:

For about twenty years I lived in a state of intoxication with my own existence and, perhaps for that very reason, excess of alcohol was one of the extremes to which I felt no urge to fly. I asked many people why they drank so much but never received an explanation that I fully understood. It was the tales of their escapades while under the influence of drink that brought me nearest to comprehending their need for it. It seemed to give them a few hours of freedom from rates which, during the rest of their lives, they reluctantly obeyed. If this was true, then in the example of my life lay a cure for drunkenness, though it was hardly an answer which Harley Street would have approved. The prophylactic is, never to conform at all.

In short, a mostly interesting, saddening and self-made tragedy made by a man who transformed himself into a work of art and shed himself of music and love. Do see the documentary "Resident Alien" on Crisp, made as Crisp was turning 80 years of age. He moved to New York at the age of 74 and the documentary does give a few very different views on his life, at least as it was lived during the latter part, which shows this autobiography as a work of art onto itself, but knowing Crisp - and most people - how could it be anything else?

This depressingly self-loathing and affected memoir had me nearly throwing the book out several times in the first 50 pages. Had I not been reading it for a bookclub, I would never have gotten that far.

Despite the historical interest of reading about the life and times of an openly homosexual man before the gay-rights movement, Crisp's writing style was extremely hard for me to bear: full of internalised homophobia, ugly and un-funny humour, and the sort of petty cattiness which he himself explains as trying to be 'feminine.' In his quest to confront the world as an overt homosexual (his word, not mine), Crisp goes out of his way to be provocative, and denigrates anyone who chooses not to.

In the end, however, I found the book to be deeply saddening, as beneath the façade there only appears to be a hurt, angry, self-hating little man who is by his own admission deeply incapable of feeling love for the very men he is attracted to.

This is the book that made Quentin Crisp famous (and infamous) and that gave him the title of England's Stately Homo. Quentin was an out homosexual even before the word 'out' was coined, and this is an ironic, and most of the times sarcastic, auto-biography on being a notorious effeminate man in the pre-70 "victorian" London days. Quentin's self-derogatory humour is, of course, only a way of criticising everyone and everything around him and getting away with it. In a Wilde kind of way this is a very very funny book, full of quotable material.

Wonderful!

Gay times said it should have been published posthumously but this is a fascinating insight into a vanished time and (almost) a vanished class of persons - the 'fem' gay man.