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Now Voyagers: Some Divisions of the Saga of Mawrdew Czgowchwz, Oltrano, Authenticated by Persons Represented Therein, Book One: The Night Sea Journey
“James McCourt is an ecstatic fabulist, robustly funny and inventive, and touchingly in love with his subject.”— Newsweek “James McCourt's Now Voyagers is a sustained fugue of inspiration. Scathing wit, gentle ironies, comic pratfalls hurtle by at express speed. Reading it is like holding your breath for several hours. . . . The language that delivers this extraordinary novel shimmers and crackles. Even the longest sentences dance their surefooted way through thickets of references that call up every detail of 1950s New York. . . . Through the book runs a passion for opera, its iconic performances, its grand gestures and green jealousies. Now Voyagers is itself a grand opera, a Brobdingnanian masterpiece. . . . This is a big novel—big in size, big in ambition, big in its emotions, big in its capacious reach. There has been nothing like it for many a year.”—Brian O'Doherty Now Voyagers is the long-awaited sequel to James McCourt's first novel, the comic masterpiece Mawrdew Czgowchwz (pronounced mardu gorgeous ). About James McCourt and his earlier work, Susan Sontag wrote, “Bravo, James McCourt, a literary countertenor in the exacting tradition of Firbank and Nabakov, who makes his daringly self-assured debut with this intelligent and very funny book.” James McCourt is the author of Queer Street , a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2003. He is the author of three novels and two short story collections and has contributed to The Yale Review , The New Yorker , and The Paris Review .
- GenresFiction
520 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2007
102 people want to read
About the author
James McCourt
19 books25 followersJames McCourt was born in 1941.
McCourt was raised in New York City and educated at Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School and Manhattan College, when it was considered the Irish-American Harvard. McCourt briefly studied acting at the Yale School of Drama, but left with fellow student Vincent Virga in 1964 to go to London, to experience the exploding theater scene there. McCourt and Virga have been a couple ever since then. They stayed in London for two periods, from 1964 to 1967, and 1969 to 1971, resettling in New York City.
After McCourt’s story was published in the New American Review, the legendary writer and social commentator Susan Sontag helped McCourt find a publisher. In 1975, McCourt published the expanded “Mawrdew Czgowchwz” in book form. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times called the book “A gloriously flamboyant debut. Take it in spoonfuls and you'll find passages to fall in love with. Sooner or later, you may even find yourself reading them aloud to your friends.”
McCourt was raised in New York City and educated at Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School and Manhattan College, when it was considered the Irish-American Harvard. McCourt briefly studied acting at the Yale School of Drama, but left with fellow student Vincent Virga in 1964 to go to London, to experience the exploding theater scene there. McCourt and Virga have been a couple ever since then. They stayed in London for two periods, from 1964 to 1967, and 1969 to 1971, resettling in New York City.
After McCourt’s story was published in the New American Review, the legendary writer and social commentator Susan Sontag helped McCourt find a publisher. In 1975, McCourt published the expanded “Mawrdew Czgowchwz” in book form. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times called the book “A gloriously flamboyant debut. Take it in spoonfuls and you'll find passages to fall in love with. Sooner or later, you may even find yourself reading them aloud to your friends.”
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January 19, 2018"...(pronounced mardu gorgeous)."
This is another hobbyhorsical Review. If you are as tired of these as I am, please go freely to that there Like button down there and pleasantly click it and move on with your gorgeous day.
In short. It's loiterature. Lovely.
Not too long ago, NYRB reissued McCourt's classic Mawrdew Czgowchwz (2002). That slim little volume still has a slight gr=score of 136 Ratings · 28 Reviews. Our present volume, which is the beginning of the continuation of that saga, pub'd in 2007 by a little known obscure small press called Turtle Point Press, has a (real) gr=score of four ratings zero reviews. Go figure.
Let's take a look at a few of the professional reviews which fortunate bade appear back ten years ago. Shall we?
!@#$%^&*
"A Diva Cruises Again" by Michael Shae from the NYT (!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/boo...
"The gay loudmouths have taken over again, they aren’t shutting up, and they have a lot more on their minds than Mawrdew and divadienst. Entire chapters are set in the Everard Baths, here less a gay cruising ground than a vortex of unidentified voices:...."
"But Mawrdew’s Firbankian whimsy has given way to Joycean logorrhea...." [remember, for readers, "logorrhea" is term of positive approbation.]
"'Now Voyagers' transcribes the exhilarating, exhausting babble of a vanished gay world remembered as far more variegated — and educated — than today’s, but here again abandon hope of following everything." [Abandon hope indeed!!! Isn't that gorgeous!]
"The range of insider reference, innuendo and quotation, from Aristotle to Liberace, is astonishing: those you know, those you don’t know and those you don’t know you don’t know (likely most of them)." [Stop it! With words like that you know you're going to sell a million copies!]
"It will help if you have a thorough Catholic education and excellent Latin. It will help if you know Irish history and mythology and Oscar Wilde." [as always, the more you know the more you are capable of enjoying, well, enjoying anything ;; I mean, just as a thought experiment -- say you know next to nothing about anything ; what could you even possibly enjoy? A lot of entertainment product is created on the presupposition that the audience knows next to nothing and so next to nothing is presented above the general level of their capability of enjoyment. Right now the radio stream on my computer is playing a thing from Carmen and I'm enjoying it just a little bit more because it brings to mind that one scene from The Simpsons where they go to the Opera and Barth and Homer make their little snarky jokes which are funny only if you know just a little bit about opera. ]
A nice enough review. But it does little to place the novel within any kind of literary tradition. I mean I like to know stuff about genealogy and stuff. I'd say, to fill in a bit of that blank that it takes the unattributed dialogue stuff from J R just a little further into the territory of discombobulation. The chatter is turned up to like eleven.
!@#$%^&*
"Return of the diva" by (alas! and of course) by Steven Moore
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/...
"In 1975, James McCourt published the most delightful novel about the opera milieu ever written..." [that's the kind of litany I'm looking for!]
"It is also the brainiest -- a tour de force of opera lore and Celtic mythology -- and written in an erudite style that approaches Joycean heights." [does that kind of description attract you or detract you?]
"You don't go to an opera for the story but for the performance of the story" [and I'll add, just to be campy and pop=culty ;; but you don't watch American Idol for the music but for the performance of the music]
"The novel's rather demanding overture, surely designed to scare off the unworthy..." [so many good (great!) novels do this]
"...and, honey, if you don't know the literary significance of June 16, this novel isn't for you." [hee hee hee]
"The result is dazzling, if at times disorienting." [dazzling :: adj :: 'extremely bright, especially so as to blind the eyes temporarily.']
"So what is McCourt's epic song saying or doing? For one thing, "Now Voyagers" erases the distinction between high and low culture, and McCourt's erudite novel provides a liberal education in everything from Eastern religion to Mae West." [just prior Moore quoted the novel, "if you can sing a thing, almost nobody minds in the least what it's saying or doing." Indeed. If you can write, who cares what it's 'about'?]
"It is the same psychodrama that Ishmael undergoes in "Moby-Dick," mentioned often in "Now Voyagers" and an obvious influence." [it goes without saying that all reading is more pleasurable more enjoyable for the reader who has read Moby-Dick]
{the link to the next page of the review is broken, so we'll pull out My Back Pages: Reviews and Essays (where you'll also find Moore's review of McCourt's Time Remaining) to finish the Read Along MET nr....}
"Opera is not for everyone, and postmodern opera for fewer still." ["Not at these prices!" --McElroy]
"Now Voyagers is the most ostentatiously literary novel of the year...." [doesn't seem to take much these days to qualify for such ; but this one is up there with the most ostentatious of the ostentatious ; let me tell you]
"...and is unapologetically elitist." [and though butt what would there be to apologize for. Let the populists apologize ; you know who they elected!]
"But the serious intellection of the novel is leavened by so much wit and campy fun that it goes down easy." [indeed. it's really the kind of novel you want to read after coming home from a long hard days work and don't feel up to figuring out all that stuff about following the plot and seeing inside the heads of 3D characters. Easier to skate through a lot of wonderful verbiage.]
"..like Gaddis and Pynchon (whose fans are the ideal audience for this novel)..." [telling it like it is. too true too true. Also (here's a hobbyhorse) it's 'ideal audience' not 'target audience' folks ; unless you are so wrapped into consumptive corporate culture even your most private life has been commodified.]
"I eagerly await book 2 of the Saga..." [so do I. Ten years later, so do I.]
!@#$%^&*
" Web-Exclusive Author Interview: James McCourt's New Voyage" By Roger Gathman
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...
[yes folks, that PW!]
McCourt is planning to turn Now Voyagers into a four-novel series. He is also committed to writing another book for Norton. Luckily, he says, "like Proust, I can spend my day lying in bed and writing. And the only other thing I center my day on is what to make Vinnie for dinner." [YES!! I finally found My PROUST!!!! And from the horse's own mouth! How's that for cajones? ]
I can't really recommend this novel highly enough. Most of you won't like it. But that a novel like this is so totally marginalized in our literary culture, well, you know what I have to say about that so i won't need to say it here.
[this Review knot copy=edit'd]
This is another hobbyhorsical Review. If you are as tired of these as I am, please go freely to that there Like button down there and pleasantly click it and move on with your gorgeous day.
In short. It's loiterature. Lovely.
Not too long ago, NYRB reissued McCourt's classic Mawrdew Czgowchwz (2002). That slim little volume still has a slight gr=score of 136 Ratings · 28 Reviews. Our present volume, which is the beginning of the continuation of that saga, pub'd in 2007 by a little known obscure small press called Turtle Point Press, has a (real) gr=score of four ratings zero reviews. Go figure.
Let's take a look at a few of the professional reviews which fortunate bade appear back ten years ago. Shall we?
!@#$%^&*
"A Diva Cruises Again" by Michael Shae from the NYT (!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/boo...
"The gay loudmouths have taken over again, they aren’t shutting up, and they have a lot more on their minds than Mawrdew and divadienst. Entire chapters are set in the Everard Baths, here less a gay cruising ground than a vortex of unidentified voices:...."
"But Mawrdew’s Firbankian whimsy has given way to Joycean logorrhea...." [remember, for readers, "logorrhea" is term of positive approbation.]
"'Now Voyagers' transcribes the exhilarating, exhausting babble of a vanished gay world remembered as far more variegated — and educated — than today’s, but here again abandon hope of following everything." [Abandon hope indeed!!! Isn't that gorgeous!]
"The range of insider reference, innuendo and quotation, from Aristotle to Liberace, is astonishing: those you know, those you don’t know and those you don’t know you don’t know (likely most of them)." [Stop it! With words like that you know you're going to sell a million copies!]
"It will help if you have a thorough Catholic education and excellent Latin. It will help if you know Irish history and mythology and Oscar Wilde." [as always, the more you know the more you are capable of enjoying, well, enjoying anything ;; I mean, just as a thought experiment -- say you know next to nothing about anything ; what could you even possibly enjoy? A lot of entertainment product is created on the presupposition that the audience knows next to nothing and so next to nothing is presented above the general level of their capability of enjoyment. Right now the radio stream on my computer is playing a thing from Carmen and I'm enjoying it just a little bit more because it brings to mind that one scene from The Simpsons where they go to the Opera and Barth and Homer make their little snarky jokes which are funny only if you know just a little bit about opera. ]
A nice enough review. But it does little to place the novel within any kind of literary tradition. I mean I like to know stuff about genealogy and stuff. I'd say, to fill in a bit of that blank that it takes the unattributed dialogue stuff from J R just a little further into the territory of discombobulation. The chatter is turned up to like eleven.
!@#$%^&*
"Return of the diva" by (alas! and of course) by Steven Moore
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/nov/...
"In 1975, James McCourt published the most delightful novel about the opera milieu ever written..." [that's the kind of litany I'm looking for!]
"It is also the brainiest -- a tour de force of opera lore and Celtic mythology -- and written in an erudite style that approaches Joycean heights." [does that kind of description attract you or detract you?]
"You don't go to an opera for the story but for the performance of the story" [and I'll add, just to be campy and pop=culty ;; but you don't watch American Idol for the music but for the performance of the music]
"The novel's rather demanding overture, surely designed to scare off the unworthy..." [so many good (great!) novels do this]
"...and, honey, if you don't know the literary significance of June 16, this novel isn't for you." [hee hee hee]
"The result is dazzling, if at times disorienting." [dazzling :: adj :: 'extremely bright, especially so as to blind the eyes temporarily.']
"So what is McCourt's epic song saying or doing? For one thing, "Now Voyagers" erases the distinction between high and low culture, and McCourt's erudite novel provides a liberal education in everything from Eastern religion to Mae West." [just prior Moore quoted the novel, "if you can sing a thing, almost nobody minds in the least what it's saying or doing." Indeed. If you can write, who cares what it's 'about'?]
"It is the same psychodrama that Ishmael undergoes in "Moby-Dick," mentioned often in "Now Voyagers" and an obvious influence." [it goes without saying that all reading is more pleasurable more enjoyable for the reader who has read Moby-Dick]
{the link to the next page of the review is broken, so we'll pull out My Back Pages: Reviews and Essays (where you'll also find Moore's review of McCourt's Time Remaining) to finish the Read Along MET nr....}
"Opera is not for everyone, and postmodern opera for fewer still." ["Not at these prices!" --McElroy]
"Now Voyagers is the most ostentatiously literary novel of the year...." [doesn't seem to take much these days to qualify for such ; but this one is up there with the most ostentatious of the ostentatious ; let me tell you]
"...and is unapologetically elitist." [and though butt what would there be to apologize for. Let the populists apologize ; you know who they elected!]
"But the serious intellection of the novel is leavened by so much wit and campy fun that it goes down easy." [indeed. it's really the kind of novel you want to read after coming home from a long hard days work and don't feel up to figuring out all that stuff about following the plot and seeing inside the heads of 3D characters. Easier to skate through a lot of wonderful verbiage.]
"..like Gaddis and Pynchon (whose fans are the ideal audience for this novel)..." [telling it like it is. too true too true. Also (here's a hobbyhorse) it's 'ideal audience' not 'target audience' folks ; unless you are so wrapped into consumptive corporate culture even your most private life has been commodified.]
"I eagerly await book 2 of the Saga..." [so do I. Ten years later, so do I.]
!@#$%^&*
" Web-Exclusive Author Interview: James McCourt's New Voyage" By Roger Gathman
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...
[yes folks, that PW!]
McCourt is planning to turn Now Voyagers into a four-novel series. He is also committed to writing another book for Norton. Luckily, he says, "like Proust, I can spend my day lying in bed and writing. And the only other thing I center my day on is what to make Vinnie for dinner." [YES!! I finally found My PROUST!!!! And from the horse's own mouth! How's that for cajones? ]
I can't really recommend this novel highly enough. Most of you won't like it. But that a novel like this is so totally marginalized in our literary culture, well, you know what I have to say about that so i won't need to say it here.
[this Review knot copy=edit'd]
Want to read
November 16, 2007Just this morning heard that he's released a sequel to 'Mawdrew Czgowchwz.' Almost choked on my donut.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews