Any time someone is afraid of you, you can use it to your own advantage.” Is it possible that here Brite is making a comment on today’s victim culture? I will return to this idea in a moment. Brite’s Exquisite Corpse gay serial killer, Andrew Compton also contracts HIV, and deals with the news in a similar way: “Well, Andrew, I told myself, anyone who violates the sanctity of a dead boy’s ass cannot expect to get away scot-free.” Unlike Wotton, Compton has no regrets and proceeds to tell himself: “Remember only that this virus in your blood makes people afraid of you. On this actuarial basis alone it did not surprise him in the least to wind up dead at forty.” For the cynical Wotton, the body therefore becomes an instrument or a machine with a fixed value, to be squeezed out however fast or slow one wishes. Pay with physical dissolution and mental disintegration. As Wotton dies of AIDS, Self tells us: “Wotton had always understood hat for each minute or hour or day or week of abandonment purchased now, you would have to pay later. Self revives Wilde’s classic creation, the pseudo-tragic figure of Henry Wotton. In Dorian, Will Self transplants Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to Thatcher’s Britain, following a group of rich, drug-addicted and promiscuous Londoners as their decadent lifestyle leads them into ruin. Exquisite Corpse was, I believe, a transgressive act of literary provocation engineered by Brite herself. Whilst both books should be celebrated and praised as artistic successes, it is Brite’s novel which is truly the more shocking work, by turning the author herself into the Other. Two recent Gothic novels have successfully exposed our cynical attitude towards love relations and our fear of getting too close to the Other: Dorian by Will Self and Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. In recent times it has become commonplace for writers and critics alike to link contemporary gothic narratives with modern day anxieties.

Andrew compton exquisite corpse