Rule Dementia!

Rule Dementia! by Quentin S. Crisp
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I admit it: sometimes I will take an author's introduction as a challenge to see if they live up to their own assessment of their work. But given that Crisp has here included two introductions: one from 2004 - a somewhat trite and generous assessment of his own work, and one from 2016 - an apologia, of sorts, for the former; I am stuck between the two Crisps. At times, the work in this volume seems naive (as hinted at in his 2016 forward), but I believe that this naivete is intentional, that Crisp wants at least some of his protagonists to be so full of innocence that their loss of the same is all the more tragic. The feelings that I felt the strongest while reading this volume were sympathy, pathos, sadness, and pity. All of this, of course, was set against the foil of "happiness", and by that I mean "self satisfaction" of the characters, some of whom are unwholesome chaps.

"Jellyfish Joe" is a beautifully-written story of a messiah, of sorts, who forms a cult based on the metaphysical philosophies of the jellyfish. It is an interesting meditation on the interface between naivete and faith and the reactions to the ultimate test of one's deeply held beliefs and spiritual experiences. What if miracles happen in spite of the miracle-worker, where the Messiah considers himself a complete fraud, but his followers do not? This story digs deeply at the very nature of faith. It gets in your heart and brain and is extremely poignant, especially for those of us who have equal doses of religious faith and incredulity warring within us. Four stars.

Remember those episodes of the X-Files that were intentionally self-effacing, goofy as heck and, yet, somehow sinister? That's what "The Haunted Bicyle" "feels" like. And more on the goofy side, with an intellectually-clumsy narrator and some weird characters and situations he encounters. I'm having a hard time describing this story, and that's good! There is one little self-referential slip regarding surrealism. Nothing is less surreal than saying you're surreal. And I don't know that the character meant it in jest.

Despite this slip, Crisp is very good at portraying whimsical awkwardness. Or is it awkward whimsy? In either case, it is strange and playful and I like it in a twisted sort of way.

"The Haunted Bicycle" has one foot in Bizarro-land, one foot in the old English ghost story, and one foot firmly planted ankle-deep in William S. Burroughs' grave. Lurking behind it is a veil (eventually rent) of cosmic horror and more than a touch of insanity. And, yes, the story is about a haunted bicycle. Five crazed stars to this unclassifiable, yet utterly delightful story.

"Zugzwang" is one of the most effective stories of paranoia I've ever read. A relative of mine (through marriage) was once clinically diagnosed with paranoia. I've spoken with him about it a couple of times, and it's a scary, helpless twisting of reality. This story is a fair fictional approximation of the disorder, with a touch of cosmic horror, which makes it truly disturbing. Four stars, only because of the unlikelihood of the relationship that begins it all, which is rather jarring and requires a self-conscious suspension of disbelief.

"The Tao of Petite Beige" is an esoteric story about pornography addiction, if nothing else. The occult journey, a sort of sublimation from banality to heaven to hell, portrayed therein is compelling, the ending predictable. It is a beautifully written story, as evidenced here in the paragraph before the very final moments of the story:

Paul floated, seemingly without volition, closer to the mouth of the alley, the two celebrants still holding his arms. The crowd slowed in its approach, like backed-up water, the trickle that passed through picking up speed again. As Paul observed the movement of bodies at this bottleneck, a word rose inexplicably to the surface of his mind to describe it - 'fulfilment'. His life was narrowing down to this single channel. Soon he would be sucked in. All the wide, glittering detail he had come to think of as his very life would be jettisoned as redundant. When he thought about 'life' becoming 'fulfilment', about an aimless ocean becoming a stream, he could not suppress a sharp sense of loss, something like the dizzying panic he had been feeling of late just walking the streets of the wide world. Here in the eddying before the final entrance to that fulfilment, the sad waters of the ocean he was to leave forever seemed to toss and pitch, like water about to run away through a crack in the earth's surface. In those waters he saw so much, he never realised his life had contained such heartbreaking detail - his long years of failure, Mother, drunken conversations with friends that had to end somewhere and yet still seemed to be going on, relationships that never started, loves and lusts never told (just count them), studies that were never made use of, clothes worn and thrown away, music listened to and tired o, places seen from the window of a moving train and never visited, letters lost or gathering dust, days wasted - all this was running away down a crack in the ocean floor. And though there was panic and sadness attached to this wide world, that too was running away. Paul was feeling more and more detached. Fulfilment!

Four stars, with a warning that this story is for adults only!

"The Waiting" is the kind of story that you read and the bottom drops right out from under you. A cosmic conspiracy on a grand scale. There are strong echoes of Thomas Ligotti here, but Crisp's own peculiar voice is always in the background. Four stars

Crisp certainly knows how to tug at the heartstrings, then rip them clean out. "Unimaginable Joy" is an ironic title, a double-entendre. You cannot imagine joy, and there is a conspiracy afoot to ensure that this is the case. It is beyond you. Any joy you think you might have grasped was only a hazy mirage. Only those who embrace the void know true joy, but it is not joy as you think of it! A heart-rending story of innocence lost and the victory of debauchery. Don't read this on a down day. It will not help your mood. Five depressing stars.

When you hear the name Quentin S. Crisp associated regularly with the names Reggie Oliver and Mark Valentine, you can bet that the work is going to be of excellent quality. And so it is. It's not as dignified as Oliver or as intellectually suave as Valentine's work, but Crisp does fit in with them like the somewhat awkward kid at the back of the smart-kid crowd, the one who laughs a bit more than the rest, but you know has a wicked brain brewing up schemes in there that no one else will - or ought to - see in public.

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