Books by Quentin S. Crisp

Aiaigasa-1. (adverb) under one umbrella 2. (noun) a romantically shared umbrella.Here, under one umbrella, shared by author and illustrator, are poems, zuihitsu (essays) and illustrations from a three-week sojourn in Japan in the autumn of 2015.Covering over a dozen locations between Osaka in the south and Naruko in the north, this travelogue now and then crosses the older path of Basho, geographically, and the footsteps of the travellers awaken echoes of the past, both cultural and personal.Far from a guidebook, this is a bewilderment of detours and digressions, a celebration of the intersections of shared experience, and a time-steeped meditation on the meaning of a life's attachment to a place that is not home.

In 2007, Quentin S. Crisp visited Paris and kept a diary of his stay there and his return to Britain. An experiment in literary improvisation, the Notebooks are also a tribute to mood, moment, image and allusion. Making a virtue of pareidolia, the author sifts through the subjective impressions of cumulative duration in an attempt to distil beauty and truth from the everyday, and to reclaim first-person experience from the ravages of 21st century media ­saturation.