Quentin Crisp turns his attention to the cinema: telling you how to best sit in the dark while other people’s faces become larger than gods.

It's a beautiful and charming collection of film essays and reflections, but it has the pleasure of a very strong character moving through the movies with a lamp, a knife, and a raised eyebrow. Crisp writes on figures and films ranging from Catherine Deneuve and William Burroughs to older Hollywood, art cinema, moral panic, stardom, performance, desire, and the almost religious machinery of screen culture.

The appeal here is partly film writing, partly Crisp himself: arch, aphoristic, queer, waspish, theatrical, and often very funny in the way only someone allergic to solemnity can be. A nice one for readers of queer cultural criticism, film writing, camp sensibility, and people who like criticism that comes without a clipboard.

First UK edition, first impression hardback published by Hamish Hamilton in 1990, with full number line. Good second-hand condition, with light wear to dust jacket and a handwritten gift inscription to the front endpaper.