Rule Dementia!
Back in print after a long hiatus, Quentin S. Crisp's third collection of fiction, Rule Dementia!, sees the author start to experiment with the form and content of the macabre tale. 'The Haunted Bicycle' is his first attempt to use Japanese I-novel techniques with supernatural subject matter and tales such as 'The Waiting' and 'Unimaginable Joys' are a fusion of cosmic vision and the fey, shoe-gazing miserablism of Generation X. Throughout, the collection forms a symbolic, whimsical bestiary of the modern soul as brimming with unexpected, irreducible and oddly specific imagery as a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
Informed by a surreal, apocalyptic paranoia, yet rooted in child-like imagination and sheltered in the lee of unschooled mysticism, these early tales together make up a playful scrapbook of despair and hope at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first.
Contents:
- Jellyfish Joe
- The Haunted Bicycle
- Zugzwang
- The Tao of Petite Beige
- The Waiting
- Unimaginable Joys
Quentin S. Crisp
Quentin S. Crisp (born 1972) is a British writer and publisher of supernatural fiction. Unlike the better-known personality of the same name, this Quentin Crisp was given the name at birth but, being younger, must use his middle initial to disambiguate. Originally from North Devon, Crisp now lives in London. He has a bachelor's degree in Japanese from the University of Durham, has spent two periods living in Japan and Japanese literature is a significant influence in his work.
Crisp is responsible for the Chomu Press, publishing fiction by contemporary authors.
Crisp also writes lyrics, which have been recorded by Kodagain.
His novella Shrike was a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award finalist.