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Title: Queer Street: The Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985 by James McCourt ISBN: 0-393-05051-3 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: November, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.55 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The McCourt Strikes Again
Comment: This book bills itself as a history of 20th-century gay culture, but it's nothing of the sort, which may account for some of the infuriated reviewers here. Hmmm... a gay history where Victoria de los Angeles gets referenced 6 times in the index, and Samuel Delany doesn't make it at all (but Marilyn Hacker does!)?
What the book really is is a collection of opinionated comments on life and culture (some of it gay) by Harold Bloom's favorite author (I should have been warned in advance by Bloom's effusive jacket blurb about "the McCourt"). Only about half the book makes sense (and I suspect it will be a different half, depending on the reader), but since it's over 500 pages, you can read the half that makes sense to you and skip the rest and still get your money's worth.
There are some oddities in the book, perhaps reflecting a lack of editing. What are we to make of the reference to Rock Hudson's wife Phyllis Yates (106)? Is this a typo (but the indexer doesn't catch it)? A trick of memory (there but for my surname go I)? Or another of the imaginary characters which people the book, like Diana Devors (220-221)?
Is McCourt's discussion of alcoholism (378-9) just wrongheaded? Or is it a deliberate parody of pomo jargonism? Which of the many "interviews" in the book actually took place (in "real life" rather than the author's head)? Beats me! I confess to finding the book infuriating at first, but eventually charming.
Rating: 4
Summary: Styrofoam Filigree on Tinfoil Masque? Yeah, but We Need It
Comment: Well in this-this-here "tome," a true Opera Queen of the Olde Schoole (as it were) reminisces about Gay Life 1945-85 from the pied-a-terre of Manhattan. Downtown becomes the standpoint from which the giddy whirl whirls... How best to describe this kaleidoscope of glimpses into the Camp sensibility? This potpourri-salmagundi-lagniappe (I just had to get into the spirit of his style...) Well, let's try some analogies.
First, what is the author's genealogical "pedigree"? The author's style is perhaps Ronald Firbank out of Oscar Wilde with fertilizing whiffs of Jean Genet and William Burroughs, not to mention Andrew Holleran's denizen dancers and dance, dedicated dourly to delight or anyhow distraction. Yes McCourt's style is "rough" as in ruggedly-baroque & rocococo. Product Disclaimer: As other reviewers here prove, you do need a Certificate in Deeper Reading to enjoy this melting pot, er ah, crazy salad. "Abandon Literalism All Ye Who Enter Here." But the style is also "rich" organic in a rather full-organ florescence...
Then, is the book itself, like "a nostalgic memorabilia trip"? As if the queer-temperament author climbs up to his memory-attic. And then unpacks for us his Hope Chest (or Drawers of Despair?) of recollections. Of his early life, and entering into The Life by night of gay New York, of his sojourn in England. Of historical events, personages. Above all of media: books, the theatre, and always opera, opera... With a satchel of sachets always, and oh the ambiance, Mary...
Or, is reading the book like "doing an archaeological dig," uncovering layers? Not just the dualism of straight daytime vs. queer night time. But also, we spot levels upon levels of historical allusion, shards of references to subcultures past. Hour of the wolf. The Everard baths and fire. The Homintern. Polari slang. Friends of Dorothy dancing the Madison. Cakes and ail. And too much more to mention. But always, it seems, "the standing-room line at the Metropolitan Opera..."
Or perhaps reading the book is like "walking through terrain"? It's varied within the hothouse botany of artifice. The forest of autobiography. Then a clearing where a duenna duet-duologue dishes diversely. Then a meadow, whereupon stage, screen, and books are played out. Then back into the orchid-greenhouse of the author's sensibility.
That sensibility-okay, more than not, it's non-"serious." Oh, he does can masculine Score Points butch-assertive fashion, like when he nails the problems with Joe Ackerly's biographer-he incisively takes a stand, using psychoanalysis and other insights well. (And his occasional Alter Ego can slap his silly self upside the sensibility, a gyroscope...) But the majority is camping on the old camp ground tonight and always. Always at one remove; and yet scoring some Truth-points even at the distance he must maintain. But, Tooo Much? Ultimately is more, less? Does it all become styrofoam filigree upon a tinfoil plakk? [{"Behind the surface, not more surface, but..."}] Could it get depressingly tiresome, this Peter Pan who never grew up? This Peter the pumpkin eater who turned into a carriage at 1 A.M., "the party's over," but this polyglot curliqueue Johnnie was so long at the fair...
Oh sure the moralists could condemn this embroidery. But, We Need This Too. Set it precious preserved on the culture shelf as a resource after all, yes... McCourt's intertextual but also "sort of unique" vision becomes valid-enough. Not at all beloved nor permitted by authoritarian regimes such as the Taliban and others nearer to home. Therefore it's "sublimation in the service of subversiveness..." If America is the melting pot, well say tossed crazy salad, well then let this crazyquilt patch belong too. Let a hundred pansies bloom, eh...
Rating: 1
Summary: This book is not worth your money!
Comment: I am not sure why the author bothered to write this book. I guess he needed some money but how he found a publisher is a mystery to me. This book is unintelligible, boring, stupid, pointless, confusing, obscure, convuluted and frustrating. It's rare, thankfully, that other authors don't have such utter contempt and disregard for their readers as this one does.
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Title: Homosexuality and Civilization by Louis Crompton ISBN: 067401197X Publisher: Belknap Press Pub. Date: 15 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century by Graham Robb ISBN: 039302038X Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
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Title: Mawrdew Czgowchwz (New York Review Books Classics) by James McCourt, Wayne Koestenbaum ISBN: 0940322978 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 09 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Master by Colm Toibin ISBN: 0743250400 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 02 June, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Unexpurgated Beaton : The Cecil Beaton Diaries as He Wrote Them, 1970-1980 by CECIL BEATON ISBN: 1400041120 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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