Graves

by Quentin S. Crisp

In Graves, Damien, a male nurse and self-styled ‘thanatophile’, is in love with death in its purer and more ideal form. However, as he casts around for some authentic way to defy the void of modernity, his thanatophilia is swiftly and insidiously corrupted. Scavenging what ‘materials’ he can, he works in isolation like a reverse Doctor Frankenstein, wishing to understand the secrets of death, not life, in order to break the narrative power of science over the modern mind. Set against the backdrop of anomie-drenched 21st-century London, Graves, Quentin S. Crisp’s second major novel, is a work of Gothic horror that confronts the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness in a world where it is easier to believe in artificial intelligence than human intelligence.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Gothic

255 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 11, 2019

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's one for the miserablist, the discontent and the noctivagant.

This was amazing, one of those rare occasions where I felt the text disappear and I was in direct connection with the author's brain. There's something unflinching, cruel and heart-wrenchingly honest about the relationships of the characters and the grim, philosophical, "Underground Man-esque" monologues of the protagonist that hit home, hard.

There's a magnificent skewering of the banalities of modern society here, the author's obsession with the dead and death comes off as sympathetic; a last hold out of something imaginative and real in a world where the human has been eradicated.

Take this little passage:

As a multi-storey car park is built for no other purpose than to accommodate parked cars, and is barren considered architecturally, or as a natural environment, so was Damien's life at this time built only to accommodate work. [...] there is most likely to exist an entire universe of microbes and crevice-dwellers who do not deign to consult humans on the subject of what is beautiful or useful.

The modern world is so gridded, domesticated and controlled that he is looking into the very cracks of it for some semblance of an alternative.

At another point he speaks about technocrats:

They want to make us all extroverts. Without . . . without anything inside. Without the ability to look inside. If everything is external, they can know it all, and keep watch on it and control it. [...] They don't exactly destroy the internal, but they make everyone believe it doesn't exist [...] But in a sense that just means it's not being watched. I'm sure they'll think they're watching the internal world, with brain-scans and so on, but really this will just be another way for them to try and deny that internal things exist. And in the meantime, there'll be something in the pipeline. Something really desperate and impossible, like a huge, undead rat floating through the sewers of the internal.

An old friend of his who claimed she would never marry, and then later does so, recommends:

You have to marry someone [...] Well, you don't have to. But if you do marry someone, you don't have to think about it anymore.

That blunt statement is both profoundly funny and depressing. All of the relationships and encounters with fellow humans in this book just serve to show how really alone and atomized modern man (and woman) are.

But these examples I've given come early in the book, and are some of the most digestible, straight-forward musings we get. I really don't want to give the impression that this book is merely about a man alienated from modern society; he wrestles with increasingly deep, elusive topics about at what constitutes living things, humans as mere clockwork machines, freewill and suicide.

I love the brutal, blunt honesty of this book and anyone who has not wrestled with these "dark night of the soul" observations to some extent must be living a charmed life indeed. Now the things our protagonist does, those grow increasingly disturbing. It's this tension which makes the effect of this book so interesting, he's sympathetic at times, and yet often isn't.

There are some sections that held my interest better than others, there's a "party scene" early on which drags on far longer than needed, but once this has passed I liked the rest of the book. But this is not going to satisfy everyone, the plot meanders, the protagonist isn't likable, and the prose is quite dense. This is also hard to pigeonhole, I suppose you'd call this a horror story but it's far more than that.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine Houellebecq exhuming the corpse of the FRANKENSTEIN story to recreate it piecemeal so that it mirrors his own aesthetic concerns and you might gain some idea of the character of this novel (and I don't invoke Houllebecq's name idly here, as he is in fact namedropped in the book in question, along with Baudelaire, Salvador Dali, C.S. Lewis, Poe, and, erm, Portishead, among others). A morbid treatise on thanatophilia in modern-day London AND a broadside against the trendy pop nihilism infecting the West, I can (hyperbole aside) picture future generations looking backwards in time and identifying this work as one of the seminal Gothic novels of the 21st century. Although I greatly enjoy reading Quentin's writing and often marvel at his masterful use of similes, sometimes the depressing and downbeat nature of his work/subject matter can bum me out (it's perhaps no great shock that one of my favorite works of his would be his poetry/essay collection AIAIGASA, which was more melancholic than macabre), the high quality of the writing in GRAVES kept me turning the pages, and I can only shake my head at the way in which he can make something even as innocuous as a knockoff cartoon rabbit come off as incredibly sinister. Some standout bits include a long section extolling the virtues of the decomposers, or "microscopic angels" (consult page 56 to see what I mean), the detailed analysis of M.R.I. scanners in chapter 4, and some pretty incredible dream scenes; dream scenes can be a tricky thing in fiction because they can often come off as self-indulgent, but many of the dreams described in this book are eerily beautiful. Two (skeletal) thumbs up!

[Patrick.G.P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damien Chase is a thanatophile, and we follow his life through a series of events where he tries to get to the heart of his condition, to confront what he sees as fundamental problems of society and its inability to cope with human consciousness and interaction in a time when materialism flourishes.

Damien’s failure to connect, to understand the interplay of human interaction and of society at large and this deep-rooted loneliness is marred by sexism and a yearning to be understood. Damien’s own philosophical rants, his armor against the world around him eventually becomes his own undoing. With cold, calculating care, he builds up expectations in his encounters with other human beings, striving to be understood, craving attention, knowing fully that there is something that sets him apart from the rest of humanity. Is Damian the antagonist of the novel or is it society’s deepening materialism, it's fast losing ability to connect, to listen and to understand the individual?

Quentin Crisp’s prose has a quiet aura over it throughout the novel and conjures up truly striking descriptions of silent, desolate graveyards and truly horrifying images of decay and death. Some chapters are really evocative and beautiful, painting decrepitude and forlorn stone slabs as things of true beauty and infinitesimal mystery. Most of the novel takes place as a metaphysical discussion, philosophical questions and thoughts posed by the protagonist, and herein lies both the strength and weakness of the novel. At times the narrative is neglected in favor of exploring the philosophical aspect of Damien’s character, making the motivation for some of his actions obscured by his own reasoning. As a look into the mind of someone who is out of place in today’s society, who’s willing to go to great lengths to explore his own philosophical views, these parts are both provoking and disturbing to read at times.

One chapter in the novel proves problematic, as Damien’s inherent lack of understanding and inability to connect serves as a backdrop for a stream of thought that is quite sexist, and anti-feminist. Do I read this as a further examination of Damien’s lack of empathy, or unwillingness to understand that the nature of identity, sexuality and human interaction has indeed changed quite a bit over the course of the last 15-20 years? In this chapter Damien’s own philosophical logic turns on himself, creating for me a sort of shift in his character and the novel itself. My initial reaction was to point a finger at the author here, but why blame him for this particular chapter and not the others that allude to necrophilia, graverobbing or substance abuse? There is cause to pause and reflect over what hits our sensibilities in our day and age, and perhaps this is even the whole point of this chapter.

There are so many thoughts I wholeheartedly agree with throughout the book, as well as disagree with, and made me think about some of the questions posed by the protagonist during the novel. Herein lies the best part of Graves, a probing, searching tone that makes the reader ponder the same things as Damien, makes the reader look at society around himself to try to understand it, to question the sense of disconnection in both human interactions and consciousness.

Crisp has written a horror novel that read almost like a philosophical text, a searching manifesto that looks deeply into the matter of consciousness and human interaction in a society that is greatly outpacing itself in terms of technology and materialism. Even in all this, there shines a gothic light throughout the book, a creeping sense of dread, of unearthing something decomposing and vile to examine in great detail before the reader. Parts of the book are truly disturbing and unsettling and leaves a lingering uncomfortable feeling after putting it down. Graves is a novel that craves a discussion around it, to probe into the questions it asks, to look at society, oneself and how we interact with them and with each other in an increasingly materialistic world.

[Ben Elias · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Graves" is an intense gothic horror novel that probes the question of what life is by understanding what death "is" - certainly not an original theme at first glance. As one might expect, the central character (Damien) is one part fascinatingly creative and one part sick. Though young, he seems to have been ground through numerous millstones philosophically and probably spiritually too, and now has, as U.G. Krishnamurti famously put it, "the courage to be on his own." However, his being on his own involves his own "research" which is quite "hands on" so to speak, and it gets interestingly out of control, but of course not in the eyes of Damien.

Crisp is a master of description - as great writers are - but what makes his description uniquely first-rate is his keen inhabitation of Damien's rhythms of attention. We are washed around in Damien's head the way "we" are washed around in our own worlds. An image Damien casually glances at, an emotion distantly felt in the moment, will later - sometimes surprisingly- become an anchor around which the obvious outer personality quirks bubble on the surface. The experience for the reader was subtle discombobulation as Crisp leaves the windows of analysis open as to what could possibly have gone wrong with this chap Damien.

However, in a way, Damien seems to be actually living the vivid life that the commercial gurus promote among their crowds of seeker-neurotics, and it's not the life they think it is. But it's all so rather enjoyably evil too. Many readers will sympathize with Damien’s disgust - albeit frequently detached and resigned - with the 21st century world, bland with fast food style culture, stiff with political idealism, frothy humanism and the media idiocy, containing a seemingly unending list of frauds in the spirituality and religion market, as well as the know-it-alls in the leaning tower of science - yet arguably the most beautiful depiction in the book is Damien's impressions during an impromptu visit inside a church, alone with himself.

While Damien's life-death "work" becomes progressively stranger, the readers' likely sympathy with Damien's casual observations becomes key to the horrifying delight of the novel, a perennial, instinctive reaction, but exquisitely elicited by Crisp.

In a particularly stunning scene, Damien covertly observes a young woman perform a series of strange movements on a rooftop - putting her own life at grave risk for what Damien concludes is wholly her own inner satisfaction - no audience. Aside from Damien's non-intervention, this might not be shocking if it were not so obviously at odds with almost everything the externalized, documentation-frenzied culture of the 21st century insists upon and celebrates.

Damien's dedication to his life-death research becomes a point of curiosity for a reader who can't accept the fantastical in religion and can't stomach the false confidence of scientism. The reader gets lost in Damien's aim along with him, but a counter tension runs in parallel - an uneasiness, feigned inner condemnation of Damien, wanting to imagine looking away, and then shock at Damien's "master" procedure which involves the only other character in the book that Crisp develops significantly.

Toward the end, the reader may begin to question their own values not because Damien is repellant but because he seems to be, for the most part, quite convincing in his assessments of the outer world, becoming a de facto champion of the inner world, our only "real" world. He's evil but unnervingly impartial within his inner landscape - a style of anti-social, and to top it off, he keeps landing on his feet, in spite of his actions in the outer world, which will only get sicker and more disturbed, leaving the reader somewhere between two worlds, and two reactions, quite discomfited - and thinking more deeply.

"Graves" is a netherworld kind of novel, masterfully penned. Grade: A

[Kulchur Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book stopped me dead in my tracks. Every so often you come across a novel so unique, so distinctive, it’s like nothing else you’ve read. Graves is one of those books. It feels like a dangerous, transgressive text explicit in a world view so alien, yet so compelling, it pries open cracks in reality. It’s a dark, uncomfortable and a heady brew that’s lingered with me long after I’ve finished it.

Crisp’s second major novel is his most immersive and refined fiction yet. With rarefied prose, a slow burn intensity, and a rich sense of interiority, Graves is a modern Gothic masterpiece.

The lead character, Damien Chase is fascinated by death in all its forms. He’s not a pleasant character to be around, as the people around him discover. But his death fixation is much more than a morbid obsession with cemeteries and sepulchral paraphernalia. It is loaded with significance; a grand attempt to overthrow the circumscriptions of the materialist philosophy prevalent in our age: the reductionist dictums that state the world is only that which can be measured by science; that consciousness is simply a byproduct of the firing electrons in our brain.

To Damien, death, and specifically death in life, is the direct access to true reality. Death becomes a radical critique of materialist thinking, an arena that cannot be mapped by the algorithms of technologist strategies that seek to reduce life and experience to that which can be digitised and monetised.

A stunning modern novel that grapples with the contemporary materialist reduction of life. In dialogue with the themes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Graves is powerful, unsettling with a true existential horror, and containing the true Decadent spirit, the fascination with the disease, the real Yellow Book.

More Quentin S. Crisp reviews at kulchurkat.uk

[John Cairns · Rating 4 out of 5]

The initial narrative of Graves is first person and the narrator says thinking about killing himself is what keeps him alive which I ticked in the margin for tickling me. ‘Only in that bottomless unknown is the riddle’s answer.’ Or none, I put in the margin, the best I can do in the circumstances of having to accept death is a bottomless unknown and in it is the riddle’s answer. The question, is there life in death, is being begged. Assuming I’m right in interpreting what the riddle is and the answer, and I’m bad at riddles, all the narrator has to do to find out if there is life in death, and that that’s not a contradiction in terms, is to kill himself and convey the confirmation back. The narrator suspects I suspect that in that case there’d be no book to be read. Instead he’s going to tell a story that’ll substantiate his ...take. What’s important here is that a rationale has been provided for the book. I like that. The narrator isn’t, however, the author. There’s little to suggest he entitled his first person narration Sentimental Prolegomenon – an undisclosed hand did that - though he could be credited with the third person narrated rest.

My practice, as you’ve taken in, is to make notes in the margin, in pencil, and string my review on them. The next knot is at the contention ‘that prudishness forbade the mention of sex in front of children even though children’ are its issue and, I added, know it. They practise it, keeping that they do from adults, and from themselves as adults.

Damien, the suggestive name of the hero, had kept up with another character, Sadie, he’d been with on a writing course. She made herself sexually unavailable by describing the invariable outcome of such relationships which reach the point where she’s wondering how long it’ll last, is asked what’s wrong, says nothing is, is told something is, ‘and basically from this point you’re doomed,’ which elicited a he, he, he from me, the only outloud laugh so far from what I was promised would be a laugh a minute. He phones her and she tells him to get lost. Ah, I wrote, as his humility vied with resentment and – what! – he apologised. For some reason he wants to hold on to this rude female - insufficiently developed as a character to justify the convention of a third person narrative which allows for entry into the thoughts and feelings of any character. She’s almost as opaque as all the others. Only Damien, who I kept seeing as the author! who is considerably older, is being fully realised. That superimposition of image, author on character, did wear off, his ghost exorcised, and won’t arise from your own reading unless you know him.

It’s Sadie, when with Damien, who’s reassured by the presence of a third character, whose inexplicable normality could only be escaped from into the unknown of death. Is death unknown? I ask, but if it’s Sadie and not the narrator who finds normality inexplicable and death unknown, then it would go towards why Damien has held on to her. Another would be while she’s grounded in reality her head is less tethered, therefore susceptible, an evocative impression the narrator doesn’t pin down or follow up on. A yet further reason would be that she prises him open. She’s curious about his obsession with graves that he explains as where you rest in peace. Only if you’re catholic, I add. He knows only death can fulfil him. How! I expostulate. Sadie gives colourless rational argument against, at the which he throws a tantrum she’s initially unaware of and contends ‘You can be dead and alive at the same time.’ Again, how? Presumably the story being told will exemplify how.

Damien ‘could not happily believe that life terminates in nothingness.’ Why not? His belief otherwise was him and if mad then he was and ‘a cure would be fatal.’ Fair enough. He wonders at Sadie’s indulgence of his bad behaviour. She was curious, I suggest. There must’ve been a time humans left their dead for carrion, he thinks. Some still do, I comment. Ooh, I go on, on no one’s guessing the flowers in his vase were always from graves. He was entirely too consistent within himself for life ever to happen to him. How not? And what does that mean? Sadie marries a man with a cowlick the narrator doesn’t know cows lick back. He reads to her from a book. She seizes on one thing, assuming Locke’s right. Maybe he’s wrong, I say, seizing on another, that the continuity of memory is the continuity of the person, and might’ve gone on to say Locke only knows of conscious memory, a fallible attribute of an entity that continues regardless, as children do, getting the gist of one phase and forgetting it the next, and consciousness and its memory is not the whole person anyway. He’s put her in a difficult position but she’s no match for him, undermined by a like belief in the primacy of consciousness. Then he reads out from another book! She’s an adversary to be beaten. I wouldn’t’ve known what to say. He seems to think life appliqué, an accretion on dead matter instead of an infusion of matter that’s thereby living, thus his ‘We are all dead and alive at the same time.’

‘To step outside oneself is to step into the freedom of “this is all there is”,’ Damien feels. Not so, I comment, from my own experience. He begins to suffer from existential double vision. Meaning what? I query. I found it useful, helping me know when not to push my employer into sacking me. Damien’s up to no good in a graveyard. Where else! To avoid spoilers and throw dust in your eyes, what would he be doing in a cemetery used for cruising, drug-dealing and taking, rough sleeping and by alkies? one of whom questions what he’s doing. Life is happening to Damien. With admirable sangfroid, he blags his way out of a tricky situation and even inveigles the less than morally upright Steve into helping. There is a price to pay. This may be where the auctorial ghost departs from the character because Damien pays it and the author is as moolie a moocher as ever lived, and I’m not even going to call into evidence the cheap bottle of Bulgarian plonk, the worst ever, he brought to my 80th birthday. My second laugh is Damien’s ‘Really?’ to Steve’s algorithm that can predict chaos. They’re on a trip Damien can’t get out of along with his ill-gotten gains to a party where he calculates he can easily separate himself from Steve but where, under the well-conveyed influence of drugs he’s paid for! that I do believe must derive from auctorial experience, Damien thinks to reveal all in a dance. Now it is possible by dance to involve all present in an aesthetic illusion but the illusion ends and people revert to reality, as after my rape dance, so I do not want Damien doing anything such. There is, then, dramatic tension from the situation if not between characters. Damien seems unable to extrapolate from his own inner life that others have the like and the narration by not going into them underlines this. You get a whiff of his sense of superiority and self-importance. I would want Steve to be developed but by the way Damien gets out of the situation, his wake zipping up behind him, I doubt the possibility of that. I’ve omitted comments, all but this last: very good.

Finally the third person narrative is justified by focussing on Sadie, which makes for dramatic tension. ‘You are the right person to know the truth. We have to work it out,’ he says. ‘I don’t have to work anything out with you,’ she rejoinders. ‘Work it out for yourself!’ Good for her. She has come with a book of her poems which I agree with her in its conventionality pales before Damien’s artistic achievement. She’s leaving. It’s at this point the author accomplishes real horror by Damien’s betrayal of trust, aggravated by his specious ‘It was because you didn't trust me in the first place that I had to do this’ and ‘maybe what’s keeping you in place now is logic.’ One can but put an exclamation mark in the margin at that! If I were Sadie I’d’ve overcome a lifetime’s inability, closed my hand into a fist and bopped him, except she was immobilised. I’d’ve gone to the police while the evidence was there for them to garner and, even if ultimately no case might be pressed, do my best to make them at least pay him a visit and in effecting that bring everything down about his ears. Very good, excellent. The publisher should enter this book for the Booker. I’ll now finish my reading.

Sadie is infected either physically or psychologically. I have contempt for her and loathing of Damien, who makes no appearance in this chapter. A writer who plays on the reader’s stops to flatter with pleasure is good. A writer who knows how to play all the reader’s stops dissonantly is better, the greater artist. Bear that in mind as Damien becomes even more repugnant.

I was aware of losing interest, the story wasn’t progressing, not irretrievably as yet, but artistic degeneracy continued on its declination until at a letter, purportedly Damien’s, it precipitously fell into ineptitude. I had to take a break from reading if I was to get to the end of the chapter. I couldn’t find an adjective to describe how I was feeling. It was if the artist who’d been playing my stops to great aesthetic effect no longer knew the rudiments of art, as if he’d suffered a stroke or heart attack at the keyboard and no longer knew how to play. The letter wasn’t in character, was irrelevant and inordinately long. No editor should’ve let it pass. The author had self-indulgently got up on his soap box and was sounding off. I did get from the content confirmation why he hasn’t replied to my sending him John Murch’s poems from prison, one of which is the most effective I’ve ever read at a first reading. You should read this book to experience for yourself the falling-off. I’ve understood why I’d reviewed two thirds before finishing my reading. I’ve the last chapter to read. The coda is a recovery, a subdued Damien stalking prey.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book shook me to my core, and has definitely become one of my favorites. It's brimming with intelligent writing and perfectly Gothic flowery language. Crisp's imagery is deeply affecting, with artful descriptions of decay. There is one passage where he describes the putrefaction of a corpse, and another where he describes a peacefully dusty kind of decay. There's really an enjoyable amount of death/decay exploration throughout the novel, with imagery appealing to every sense.

I found Damien's thoughts on death-in-life and life-in-death very interesting. There was a really great monologue on page 68:

"...so nothing leaves the body. There is only matter. Therefore, if a living body and a dead body are not made different by any magic ingredients, they are the same thing, just like a clockwork toy that is moving is exactly the same as a clockwork toy whose spring has wound down. And therefore, it is not only possible to be dead and living at the same time, but that is unavoidably what we all are. The only thing 'living' can possibly mean is that dead matter moves in a particular way. So living is only something built on top of being dead, or is only a subset of being dead. We are all dead and alive at the same time."

Actually, this book posits a lot of thought-provoking questions, like "Why must we survive? We are we trying to kill ourselves?" As the synopsis says, it confronts the problem of consciousness, but also of the soul and free will. The big questions, basically.

I loved the inclusion of references to dark art and music. Pieces I especially liked were The Old Man and Death (1779) by Joseph Wright, Skeletons Trying to Warm Themselves (1889) by James Ensor, and "Wandering Star" by Portishead.

[Maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Graves by Quentin S. Crisp is a haunting dive into the mind of Damien, a nurse obsessed with death. Set in a bleak, modern London, the story captures his struggle to find meaning in a world that feels increasingly disconnected. Crisp’s writing pulls you right into Damien’s head, making his loneliness and philosophical rants against society's materialism both unsettling and strangely sympathetic. The vivid imagery of decay reflects Damien’s inner turmoil, and you can’t help but feel for him, even as he spirals into darker thoughts.

What’s really intriguing about "Graves" is how it raises big questions about identity and existence. Crisp critiques our obsession with external validation, inviting readers to reflect on their own disconnection. While the narrative can meander at times, the philosophical depth makes it a fascinatimg read for those willing to wrestle with its darker themes. With its gothic atmosphere and sharp insights, "Graves" is a compelling exploration of the search for authenticity in a superficial world.

[Des Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This incredible, often seemingly or intentionally over-sophistical or -sophisticated stuff, in both bad and good literary-aesthetic terms, where previous events lead to what one might have predicted of further communion with the dead, headstone in the head, a Mahler’s Resurrection in dream and real forms, and visualised scenes akin to Clark Ashton Smith’s The Seed And The Sepulchre. The “space heater.” And “the omniscience of the digital eye.” All brought to the thanato-soup or -fuzz. The AIAIGASA of bubble gum and melded livers. Yet, one has a sense that “What might have seemed an alien and intolerable cubism to him before had unfolded into completeness and perfection.” As I attempt to do with my reviewing over the years?

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long to post here.
Above is one of its observations.

[bryan diem · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times, I really understood our protagonist here. At other times I couldn't understand him any less. Wonderful stuff here.

[Vultural · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crisp, Quentin S. - Graves

An obsession with death. Death and afterwards.
After decay and putrefaction, is there a metamorphosis, a transfiguration? Does the soul endure? And what is the soul? A construct of memory?
Damien dwells on these matters, along with similar depths.
He becomes a nurse, working at the crossroads of existence and expiration. He bears the cross of intelligence, often more a burden than a blessing.
Unlike the majority, his overwhelming curiosity compels him to activity.
This is a novel rich in thought, vivid with details. Not a page turner, either, as many passages demand reflection and contemplation.
I will likely tackle this again, as I suspect multiple readings will divulge more secrets.