The Lonely Cannibal: A Digestion of Poppy Z. Brite’s Exquisite Corpse
Exquisite Corpse – a novel of perverted desires, queerness and violence – traverses the landscape of 1980s gay culture in New Orleans and the predatory killers who stalk their streets – HIV and murderers alike.
The narrative follows four main characters and their destructive lives, each riddled with a deep-rooted loneliness and longing for intimacy – relieved only in the brief moments of sex and violence in their meetings together. Their narratives are distinct but entwined, enveloping one another more and more as they lead up to one bloody night where their four lives converge fully.
Our central character, who the book begins and ends with, is Andrew Compton: a perverse serial killer of young boys, troubled by his isolation in prison and his inability to connect with people, and distraught at his failures in love. Compton is a self-analytical man, often musing on his appreciation of death, of beauty, and of art. He considers himself a romantic and an artist, alone and unseen in a world that never wanted him, and truly, deeply alien to everyone else – that is until he escapes his London prison to the French Quarter of New Orleans where he meets Jay Byrne.
Jay Byrne is a rich, sadistic cannibal with a taste for torturing boys, and a scarcely controlled desire to devour a local boy named Tran – who, upon meeting him, Compton declares the perfect victim. Alongside the events that lead up to Byrne and Compton’s meeting, we follow the recent breakup of Tran and Luke Ransom – his toxic ex-lover dying of AIDS and devolving in rage on his radio show rants.
The theme of loneliness is arguably the strongest of all throughout the novel. Tran and Luke spend their time longing for the other in the fallout of their toxic relationship, sleeping around in hopes to avoid confronting an empty bed, but Byrne too expresses his fear of being alone upon meeting Compton in a way much more desperate than the others.
He confesses feeling as though he is unable to make people stay with him and began cannibalising his victims because of this. He explains how he feels as though by consuming their meat they become a part of him and thus- stay with him even after death.
Cannibalism in Exquisite Corpse is an avoidance – a filling of some void, desperate attempt at closeness and intimacy. In certain moments, we see how it fulfils cravings of a sexual nature, of tender ones, and even of simple hunger at points. But whilst Jay Byrne is our playboy cannibal, consuming victims from beginning to end, it is Compton who the story truly revolves around.
When Byrne and Compton meet, they are besotted with each other – excitable as children having found a common interest to share, finally feeling seen in their most intimate forms of self. While their murderous cravings and sociopathic tendencies obviously play a core role in their connection and interest with each other, it is their feelings of alienation and loneliness that plunges them into such a deep and destructive relationship.
In their first meeting, we see them at their most vulnerable, with all their layers peeled back, in an exchange between the two: “What is your greatest terror, Jay?” “Loneliness”. He reveals this to be true time and time again.
In discussion of cannibalism, Compton confesses that he is afraid that eating his victims will cause them to stay and asks Byrne how he does not have this fear. Byrne replies that before Compton, it was his “only comfort” – for what else is cannibalism but company? His appreciation of Compton’s company is further unveiled when Byrne describes how while some part of him felt intimately invaded, another “fell to its knees and sobbed in gratitude that it was no longer alone.”
This feeling is not one sided either. Having met Byrne, Compton describes his feelings of connection. “I had spent my life feeling like a species of one… now here was another of my kind.”. Shortly after this he also confesses his love to Byrne, and whilst Byrne is unable to reciprocate for the belief that his love would kill them both, they instead exchange “I know you[‘s]”, something seemingly deeper and more valuable than love.
It is when Byrne dies, and Compton is alone once more in the final pages of the book, that we see an act of cannibalism in its purest form. After his death, Compton packs a sandwich made with Byrne’s meat and boards a sleeper train headed for the American desert. It is here, in a private compartment – naked and tucked beneath the covers of his bed – that he consumes Byrne.
He describes the meat as “made up of all of Jay’s boys”, and it is this moment that makes me reconsider the title of the book. It is an interesting choice, Brite’s title. At first, “exquisite” is a choice word used throughout to describe meals and bodies alike – to describe beautiful boys and attraction – but in this moment another meaning comes to light.
Besides the novel, Exquisite Corpse is the name of a collaborative drawing approach created by surrealist artists, where each contributor would draw a part of a body, conceal their addition, and hand it to the next person to draw the next part. When finished, the piece is unfolded to reveal the body parts all together in what is one, patchwork, exquisite corpse (Tate, 2025).
This is what Byrne’s meat is to Compton: an exquisite corpse not only made of his lover but also of the victims who stayed with him, and now who will stay with Compton. Byrne who was his beautiful concoction of a boy, his soul mate, and now, in death, his exquisite corpse.
When he finishes, Compton wills himself into a deep sleep once again, wishing to “assimilate as much of [Byrne] as possible”. “When I awoke, he would be with me always…” – this act a remedy to his loss of Byrne and his loneliness. A final, or first, act of cannibalism that would allow he and his soul mate to revel in “all the world’s pleasures” together.
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Tate (2025) CADAVRE EXQUIS (EXQUISITE CORPSE). Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/cadavre-exquis-exquisite-corpse (Accessed: 11 May 2025).