Lasting City: The Anatomy of Nostalgia
by James McCourt
Liveright / W. W. Norton. 321 pages, $26.95
IF PROUST AND JOYCE had had a gay love child, he might very well have resembled James McCourt (b. 1941). Author of several well-received books, including Mawrdew Czgowchwz (1975, pronounced “Mardu Gorgeous”) and Time Remaining (1993), McCourt combines Proust’s sensitivity and obsession with the past with Joyce’s delight in verbal wordplay and stream of consciousness technique. The result, however, is something distinctly his own: a kind of high literary sensibility filtered through camp.
Lasting City takes its impetus from one of the author’s strongest early childhood memories: the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Playing in the sand on a beach where he’s making a “sand castle” of the Flatiron Building, the author’s work is soon trampled by bullies. Right on the heels of this comes the news of the dropping of the bomb. The two events become conflated in his mind, and the effect is enhanced by the assertion that his grandfather had helped to build the Flatiron Building. (One of the running gags in the book is that his grandfather seems to have been responsible for every famous building in the city.)
On this foundation, McCourt establishes a theme of personal loss set against the loss of entire cities as a historical reality. And it’s not just Hiroshima: later, Dresden and London make their (dis)appearance; and later still, Sputnik appears in the skies above him, and the possibility of all life being wiped out by bombs becomes another all-too-frightening reality for him to contemplate. It is this impending sense of loss that gives Lasting City its Proustian resonance and pathos. The effect is somewhat like that of someone trying to get it all down, as fast as he can, before the city of his memory is erased by time. (“Einstein says time bends. It certainly bends you over, I can tell you that much.”) One of the other chief impulses of the book derives from the author’s mother, a colorful actress of early film, whose death at the age of 94, as well as her entreaty to “Tell everything,” prompts the author to begin his memoir. The result is the author’s wildly playful, non-chronological, and highly digressive account of his life as a gay man in New York City in the second half of the 20th century (though the author’s stated intent is only to write his life story up to the age of seven!). Reference to his birth must wait until page 123, but that topic is dropped in favor of opera, loving memories of his Jackson Heights neighborhood, fragments of his mother’s and father’s history, and so on (though his birth recurs many pages later). If this mode is reminiscent of Tristram Shandy, the tone is more like that of the late poet John Berryman. The effect throughout is of a story glancingly told, a kind of mad, sad, funny history that—much like the author’s mother, apparently—can turn on a dime to become alternately touching or infuriating, depending upon your level of patience. And patience, it must be said, is definitely required for an appreciation of this book. Despite the richness of the author’s imagination, his verbal wit, and literary acumen—literary allusions populate every page of the book—it may leave non-English majors scratching their heads. One of the problems of Lasting City, whose subtitle is “The Anatomy of Nostalgia,” is that the artifacts of nostalgia for McCourt—the many product brands, radio shows, commercials, opera recordings, live theatrical performances, and so on—are specific to the author’s own times but may not resonate with other generations. McCourt assumes a familiarity with his cultural touchstones and doesn’t attempt to explain them to the reader. For those who didn’t live through the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, I fear a certain weariness is likely to set in about two-thirds of the way through the book. Certainly, even given its intended discursiveness, the book could have used a bit more of a “through line.” The early scenes of a cab ride and interactions with a Hindu cabdriver named Pramit Banarjee show much promise, but then are abandoned. Similarly, the author’s early hints about his mother’s complex character are only partially developed. And yet, Lasting City is mostly a joy to read. There is hardly a page that doesn’t contain some verbal delight, and not an episode that isn’t playful, thoughtful, or inventive. In the end, Lasting City is like a very gifted child: it dazzles you with its brilliance but also leaves you a bit exhausted. ________________________________________________________ Dale Boyer is a writer living and working in Chicago.
