Books: Old Boy

HOW TO BECOME A VIRGIN by Quentin Crisp

St. Martin's; 192 pages; $9.95

Britain has two reigning queens: Elizabeth II and Quentin Crisp. Or so Crisp maintained in his autobiography The Naked Civil Servant. In it, the former artist's model and self-described stately homo of England detailed his early life and hard times. The book was surprisingly comic, acidulous and touching, and the TV-film version won awards for Actor John Hurt. It was precisely as the old poseur had figured: "Even if you only lean limply against a wall and you happen to live a...

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