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In my car on the V train, heading into Rockefeller Center, people were reading the following books:

• Cathedral by Raymond Carver
• The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp
• The Diary of Peter Ginz
• Love and War by John Jakes
• Acres of Diamonds: The Russell Conwell Story by Gregory A. Dixon and Russell H. Conwell

Pretty literate group overall. It’s fun to do this but I’m probably going to stop. It’s hard to identify what everyone’s reading without lurking. To identify The Naked Civil Servant, I had to stand right next to the girl reading it. Right as I was thinking “I bet I should not be doing this,” some older guy by the door on the other side of the car said very loudly “Just say hello to her.” Point taken, society. I had crossed a boundary.

I briefly interviewed Quentin Crisp in 1994. I was a reporter for The Ridgefield Press, and Crisp had been the voice over for an independent horror film (Natural Born Crazies) some local kids made. In the pre-digital world, making a movie was a momentous occasion, so this was a story. My editor thought Crisp would be a good interview — warmly sarcastic with wry, knowing barbs.

He was exactly that — so much that the interview lasted less then 3 minutes. I called him at his New York apartment. He politely confirmed that he had done the narration. So I asked “What was it like?” And he sensibly answered something like “Well, I mean, it wasn’t really ‘like’ anything. They contacted my agent and offered a fee. I agreed, and went to a recording studio and read their script into a microphone!” He had a warm tone, but sarcastic enough that I felt stupid for even calling him. He was right: he spent maybe a day on this project; he had nothing to do with the movie really. Suddenly, I didn’t care about his involvement or the movie itself.

So I agreed that that was all there was to it, and thanked him and said good-bye! He said “Oh, is that all?” And I said “I think so.” And that was it. I went on to write a story about a woman who had taken Poloroids of her neighbors running illegal businesses out of their homes.

I wasn’t a great reporter, really.

But I’m sure Quentin Crisp was indeed a wry and observant storyteller. A girl was reading his book this morning on the V train.

| Tags: books, nyc, subways