The Naked Civil Servant (Penguin Classics)
by Quentin Crisp

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Book Reviews of The Naked Civil Servant (Penguin Classics)

Book Review: "Queer" Before There Was "Queer" -- And Funny as Hell
Summary: 5 Stars

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. First-rate all the way, full of surprises, and interesting glimpses of an interwar England not usually mentioned in the usual histories.

Summary of The Naked Civil Servant (Penguin Classics)

Authors Books

• Books > Subjects > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature
• Memoirs
• Gay & Lesbian > Biographies & Memoirs > Gay
• Nonfiction
• Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory
• British