The Naked Civil Servant

Rereading "The Naked Civil Servant" after many years, I find Quentin Crisp's melancholy wit just as bracing as I did when I first encountered the book. The chiseled perfection of Crisp's aphorisms recall Oscar Wilde (though Crisp's distaste for Wilde was famous; Wilde's hubris and subsequent downfall made life that much harder for the gay men, such as Crisp, who came after him). One famous example: "I would have been tempted to say that he was ill did I not know that health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbors." Another: "'Immaturity' is one more word that requires definition. To men it means the inability to stand on one's own two feet. A woman flings it at anyone who doesn't want to marry her. Here I find myself for once inclined toward the masculine view." Yet despite the humor, the overwhelming mood of "The Naked Civil Servant" is of loneliness. Crisp, who outed himself flamboyantly forty years before Stonewall, presents himself as a wildly contradictory character: exhibitionistic yet inherently and Englishly modest, too honest to present himself as anything other than he was, yet realizing fully the opprobrium and loss of companionship he would suffer by doing so. Reading his autobiography shows a younger generation of gay men precisely the mindset a hidebound society instilled in homosexuals in the early 20th century. Crisp, despite his flamboyance, was not immune to it: "Homosexuals were ashamed. They resented not being in the mainstream of life. The feeling varied from irritation to the anguish of irrevocable exile. It had little to do with God or the neighbors or the police. It was private and irremediable." In subsequent years--he lived to be ninety, outliving the publication of "The Naked Civil Servant" by three decades--Crisp found a measure of public acceptance and acclaim he would have thought impossible in the 1930s. Yet the loneliness and melancholy never really left him. To read "The Naked Civil Servant" is to be impressed by a great personality and a brilliant, acute observer of sex and society. But, at the same time, you wish he could have found a little more happiness for himself.

"This is an unusually riveting, exuberant autobiography of a man who, in 1931, 'came out' in the streets of London as a self-confessed and self-evident homosexual. At a time when the slightest sign of homosexuality aroused immediate disgust, Quentin Crisp made the courageous decision to be true to his nature. He adopted an outrageously effeminate manner and appearance ('I wore makeup at a time when even on women eye shadow was sinful'), and his flamboyant exhibitionism, henna-dyed hair, and unconventional behavior shocked London society of the thirties. Though he was harassed, ridiculed, and beaten, he was determined to spread the message that homosexuality did not exclude him or anyone else from the human race. ¶ Quentin Crisp has become a cult celebrity since the highly acclaimed dramatization of The Naked Civil Servant was first aired on American television. His is a unique life story. One feels the strength and humor of an honest man, determined to face the world with the truth about himself."--© zebraz

By far, one of the funniest books I've ever read, and I read quite a bit. The writing is dry and witty, like Sedaris in ME TALK PRETTY or McCrae in BARK OF THE DOGWOOD, and Crip's insights into things are at once hysterical and also tinged with sadness. My favorite quote in the book? "My parents hated me chiefly because I was expensive." Or something along those lines.Do yourself a favor and read this. Like CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES or NAKED this is one you'll want to keep on your bookshelves to pull out from time to time when you need a good laugh. Highly recommended.

Quentin Crisp truly embodies the expression "to thine own self be true." But his life bumped up against another cliche, "don't frighten the horses." As a young man in London during the 1920s and 1930s, he lived openly as an effeminate, homosexual man, not closeted, but, as he says in these witty memoirs, "brazening it out" and willing to take the social and other lumps associated with such visibility. Actually, his sexuality seems to be the least of his problems in these sharply observed autobiographical accounts. An eccentric in the true British tradition, he refused ever to dust his bedroom, observing that after the first three years the dust didn't get any worse . . . and at bedtime he slipped beneath the seldom-washed sheets ensconced in cold cream like a cocoon in its chrysalis. Corporate life had its own bewilderments and intrigues for Mr. Crisp, who was silly enough to take literally what he was told to do. When asked to buy his employer a pair of scissors, he went to a good stationery store and spent one shilling sixpence (eighteen pence, pre-decimalization, about US$.50 at that time) for a good pair of office scissors. This frightened his office colleague no end, who had expected him to pick up a cheap pair at Woolworth's for sixpence. Crisp facetiously suggested denominating the more costly pair "paper shears" and was aghast when she accepted his notion all too happily. His droll take on the mismatch between his mentality and the corporate life shows us that his ego demands no grandiosity, no sense of who is "right" and who is "wrong," but simply a perpetual befuddlement at two mindsets that can never understand each other. Along with such everyday satires of circumstance, much of the pleasure of *The Naked Civil Servant* lies in its prose style and tone, which are conversational and chatty, but also clever and occasionally arch. Perhaps like a pleasant, purring pussy cat who gets its back up once in a while, but is never indignant -- not at us, anyway. As an inducement to stay in town and leave the family alone, Crisp mentions receiving the proceeds of "GUILT"-edged securities, a pun on the British term "gilt-edged" securities, or what we Americans would call "blue-chip stock." But of course, interwar gay life had its stereotyping and role-playing. The he-man types were expected to be the sexual aggressors, and the nellies the submissives. In one section Crisp complains that he and his friends "camped it up all over the place" but their virile new acquaintances were too dense to figure out what they wanted in bed. Because of this book, Mr. Crisp's services (as an author and savant) became greatly in demand on this side of the pond, and he became a favorite in lecture halls and as author of such books as *Manners From Heaven.* His Wildean sensibility was evident -- when he panned a movie he'd say something like "it was as boring as real life." But Crisp was never a bore, and there was never a book like this. Firs

Written in what the author describes as his "Havisham twilight," Quentin Crisp set the literary world on it's head when he published this ribald memoir. A man of estimable spirit and courage, Crisp has documented his early life with great wit. By living openly and honestly despite the often negative consequences, Crisp was a pioneer in the gay rights movement. Perhaps this was not his intention at the time, but his willingness to share his life with us in this most enjoyable momoir, has served to embolden an entire generation.