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Review

Baroquely eloquent and flamboyantly gay, Quentin Crisp was perhaps best known for his autobiographical comic masterpiece, "The Naked Civil Servant." In "The Stately Homo," friends, admirers, and fellow artists pay tribute to one of the 20th century's true English eccentrics.

"You are a male personage, I presume?" sneered the magistrate trying Quentin Crisp for soliciting. Crisp successfully defended himself by arguing that if he had wanted to engage in clandestine sex, he would hardly have set out to make himself so conspicuous. In his clumsy fashion, the magistrate had stumbled on the key to this extraordinary individual. Born Dennis Pratt into an impoverished English family, he wanted to be something different--and he transformed himself into Quentin Crisp, the urbanely witty, exhibitionistic, ever-charming raconteur. In "The Stately Homo," his various careers--as a performer, writer, and authority on style and etiquette--are examined with irreverence, wit, and affection. Quentin Crisp first gained fame when "The Naked Civil Servant," a highly successful film based on his book, brought him to the attention of millions. He went on to appear, for many years, in one-man shows in Britain and New York. He was in the midst of such a tour when he died in 1999.