Quentin Crisp

Rating:
Summary: Poorly written and useless with one exception
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly written and useless with one exception
Review: 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.