Now in his sixth decade and living on the outskirts of London in near-poverty on benefits
and the products of his imagination, the supernaturally-inclined English writer Quentin S. Crisp
(not to be confused with the other Quentin Crisp, author of The Naked Civil Servant)
contemplates the value of living a creative life such as his.
As chronic austerity makes security increasingly elusive, and without the assurances of
fame, posterity, or financial stability—a condition shared by many— he begins to
sense his life and writing edging toward material disappearance.
Duckweed (根無し草) adopts the form of the literary zuihitsu,
a style of Japanese literature dating back to the Heian period, where one
‘‘follows the brush’’. This feature-length film-essay is structured around readings
of Crisp’s own zuihitsu of the same name, which, in essence, is the story of his life.
As we follow Crisp on a walk deeper into the ‘‘little wood’’ of his private landscape,
the binaries of success and failure begin to fade away. The film presents Crisp
as he reimagines himself as a simple duckweed plant, floating on the surface tension
of earthly appearances. As he explores the implications of this identity,
we are invited to speculate on our possible existence in another world; despite the
undeniable knowledge of our gradual extinction in this one.
A trulyeccentric and original voice in contemporary fiction, Crisp’s body of literary work spans
the Japanese I-novel, tanka poetry, memoir, and supernatural and horror fiction, influenced
in equal measure by such writers as H.P. Lovecraft, Yukio Mishima and Nagai Kafū.
His published works include Shrike (2009) ‘Remember You’re a One-Ball!’ (2010),
Erith (2015), Blue on Blue (2015), Aiaigasa (2018), Graves (2019), Hamster Dam (2021),
Binturong Time (2022), Ikaho (2023) and I Reign in Hell (2024).