About The News : a publication of the Atlanta Gay Center. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1984-199? | View Entire Issue (April 25, 1986)
THE NEWS INTERVIEWS QUENTIN CRISP interview by Gene Koland photography by Foster Corbin Quentin Crisp is not every gay person's cup of tea. That's a shame, because Mr. Crisp is the gentlest and most courteous of men. His manner is dry, but not serious, a sort of thin, gay Alfred Hitchcock. It would be a serious mistake to take everything Quentin Crisp says at face value an error on the order of looking at an epigram by Oscar Wilde as a scientific maxim. Earlier in the century, someone said; "Solemnity is a condition precedent to believing anything without evidence." The overly solemn among gay activists often find Crisp a troubling relic of another age. He is not personally involved in the gay movement. He is not even especially fond of sex. His agenda is about as non-political as agendas get, in the usual sense of the word. But it is not true to say that Quentin Crisp has nothing' liberating to tell us. At the core of everything he says is the importance of finding one's own true self and building a personal style based on that self. For Crisp, real liberation begins on the inside, not in mass movements. During Crisp's recent visit to Atlanta he has done two weeks of his one-man show, "An Evening with Quentin Crisp," at the Theatrical Outfit; as well as autographing copies of his latest book, "Manners from Heaven" at McGuire's Books. He has also been seen occupying the center of attention at such places as The Bar on Peachtree. 'The NEWS" had an opportunity, during his visit, to spend a most delightful hour with the Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp. THE NEWS: Your books seem full of surprise that anyone would care what you have to say, but evidently they do. Why do you think you are such a celebrity? CRISP: America is the one place in the world where you don't have to do something well enough or long enough to become famous-you can do fame by itself. When I first came to America I was put immediately into the smiling and nodding racket, and that I like doing. The profession of Being is something I like a lot. I think a lot of people like it more than they say. Some famous people sit on a television talk show in front of eight million people and say, "Really, I'm a very private person." Well, I'm not. I like to be recognized. I think I've become a celebrity because I actually enjoy it. THE NEWS: A lot of people expect you to be more outrageous than you seem to be. CRISP: Yes, they do. I was more outrageous in the past, but time makes you less so. The world has got more outrageous- even as I am now, I would have been asked to leave restaurants, in a time gone by. Aou; this would really surprise me... THE NEWS: Now they advertise that you're going to be present. CRISP: That's right. I passed from total ostracism to almost total acceptance at such speed I've never really been in the middle. THE NEWS: In 'The Naked Civil Servant" you used to get beaten up a lot. CRISP: The book is more rambling, and sadder, than the television show (with John Hurt) was. But I guess if you only have an hour-and-a-half to tell somebody's life story, all the dramatic incidents get pushed together. Days passed, weeks went by in which nothing happened to me at all. It's the same as my saying that in America everybody talks to you. One person talks to you and a hundred people walk by and take no notice whatsoever. My life was frightening, it was lonely; I never walked about London without being very wary about where I was and who I was with and whether I was in any danger. But I suppose I've only been left on the pavement unconscious twice in my lifetime. THE NEWS: Just when the subject of manners seemed to have gone out of fashion forever, we've started seeing a lot of books on the subject, yours included. What happened? CRISP: I think, exactly what you say: manners had really got so bad that people said, this really can't go on. And it was natural enough -as the world gets fuller of people, manners are more necessary. Some kind of manners, at least. You can't return to the sort of manners that existed when I was young, and I'm only an Edwardian, not actually a Victorian. When I was a child, visiting cards fluttered through the air- you had to leave visiting cards for yourself, another for your - husband, another one for your son. Well, all that can't go on now, this simply isn't the time for that. But there isn't the continued on page 3
