Quentin Crisp (Paperback)

~ Tim Fountain (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Fountain paints his story agaisnt the backdrop of Crisp's colourful and controversial life and sheds some light on the intriguing events leading up to his death. It is a compelling portrait of man who Fountain calls a 'great, glittering contradiction': a man who flaunted his sexuality at a time when the penalty for buggery was gaol, a man whose very name epitomised style and yet lived alone in abject poverty in a room he refused to clean and a man who confidently declared at the height of the AIDS epidemic that he 'didn't believe it existed'.

About the Author

Tim Fountain is a writer working in film, theatre and television and is the Dramaturgue of London's pioneering Bush Theatre. He is the author of the hit play based on Crisp, Resident Alien which opened in London in 1999 and off Broadway in August 2000.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Absolute Press (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1899791485
• ISBN-13: 978-1899791484
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,312,864 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poorly written and useless with one exception, July 21, 2003

By	Yekaterina Dudina "Kat" (New York City) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Being a huge QC fan I was extremely disappointed with this book. I hoped to learn something new, otherwise, why would he bother writing about Mr Crisp, when Mr Crisp already did so, much more successfully?
Mr Fountain seems to believe he is an expert on Quentin Crisp, having met him only once and having compiled a play about him, using Mr Crisp's own works and an interview. A major part of this book consists of the description of incidents we already know about from Quentin Crisp's books. It is truly unnecessary to repeat these in a much less poetic form. Mr Fountain supplements these stories with his own opinions about what they must have meant in relation to QC's life. These are neither witty nor wise, and I don't see why his opinion should be of any significance for the reader, who can arrive at his own conclusions by reading QC's works.
What infuriated me the most is the carelessness with which this book was written. It's as though Mr Fountain had to submit a college report and didn't have enough time to proof read it. It's full of grammatical errors such as inconsistent and incorrect use of "it's" and "its". In the chapter where Mr Fountain mentions the films Mr Crisp was involved in, he named "Philadelphia" starring "Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman", where in reality it starred Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. He did not even have the decency to get his facts straight! If I were him, I would fire my editor immediately.
The only chapters worth reading are those describing Mr Crisp's death and glorifying his existence.