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Time Remaining
In two novellas, McCourt opens up a whole world--spirited, defiant, celebratory--of gay life in New York in the last 25 years. McCourt's writing has been described as "lurid, lovable, outlandish" (Chicago Tribune). McCourt is the author of Kaye Wayfaring and Mawrdew Czgowchwz.
273 pages, Hardcover
First published May 4, 1993
2 people are currently reading
449 people want to read
About the author
James McCourt
18 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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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 3, 2016
Picked by Harold Bloom for inclusion in THE WESTERN CANNON. One of Dennis Cooper's 50 Favorite Novels. Written by James McCourt whose first book MAWRDEW CZGOWCHWZ was feted by Susan Sontag, compared to Firbank and Nabokov, and reissued by New York Review of Books. So why does nobody talk about this novel?
I have some ideas. First, while I am a card-carrying member of the MAWRDEW CZGOWCHWZ appreciation society, this novel feels entirely different from that operatic masterpiece. It's written in what the narrator once refers to as the Jackson Pollock splatter method of associations. It's as fractured as a shattered mirror. And it's full of digressions, digressions upon digressions, and digressions upon digressions upon-- you get the idea. At first, it's hard to keep up with what's being talked about, much less who, and there are so many inside cultural references to gay life in NYC in the 40s, 50s, and 60s that Grad Students could profitably annotate the hell out of this. I won't lie - several times the chatty (let's not say bitchy) narrators of this two-part interlinked tale drove me to distraction and I seriously considered putting the book down unfinished.
I'm glad I didn't. McCourt unfurls fantastic sentences and has perfect pitch with voice. He's a master of well wrought prose, on the level in his own way with William H. Gass. And even though the book seems self-indulgent in the extreme at times, the fragments eventually paint a detailed portrait and the scattered bon mots gain gravitas and the ending is moving without lapsing into sentimentality. Although the story pays tribute to AIDS victims and a culture that was quickly vanishing, it's bursting at the seams with life, vibrant gossip, and wickedly funny scenes. The elegiac notes are hit softly and resound through the floorboards of the book's prose, but McCourt knows these important sounds are not the only ones worth hearing in our time remaining.
I have some ideas. First, while I am a card-carrying member of the MAWRDEW CZGOWCHWZ appreciation society, this novel feels entirely different from that operatic masterpiece. It's written in what the narrator once refers to as the Jackson Pollock splatter method of associations. It's as fractured as a shattered mirror. And it's full of digressions, digressions upon digressions, and digressions upon digressions upon-- you get the idea. At first, it's hard to keep up with what's being talked about, much less who, and there are so many inside cultural references to gay life in NYC in the 40s, 50s, and 60s that Grad Students could profitably annotate the hell out of this. I won't lie - several times the chatty (let's not say bitchy) narrators of this two-part interlinked tale drove me to distraction and I seriously considered putting the book down unfinished.
I'm glad I didn't. McCourt unfurls fantastic sentences and has perfect pitch with voice. He's a master of well wrought prose, on the level in his own way with William H. Gass. And even though the book seems self-indulgent in the extreme at times, the fragments eventually paint a detailed portrait and the scattered bon mots gain gravitas and the ending is moving without lapsing into sentimentality. Although the story pays tribute to AIDS victims and a culture that was quickly vanishing, it's bursting at the seams with life, vibrant gossip, and wickedly funny scenes. The elegiac notes are hit softly and resound through the floorboards of the book's prose, but McCourt knows these important sounds are not the only ones worth hearing in our time remaining.
i-want-money
February 3, 2018"A Vibrant, Elegiac Novel of the AIDS Pandemic That Shouldn’t Be Forgotten"
By Michael LaPointe
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-...
'The critic Harold Bloom called “Time Remaining” a “sad and beautiful elegy,” and included it in the list of “permanent works” appended to his best-selling 1994 book, “The Western Canon.” It is now out of print.'
"However grim those sights, McCourt always renders them in vivid oils, never charcoal. Odette has explicit scorn for George Orwell’s notion that good prose should be like a windowpane one can see through. “See through to what—a brick wall?” “Time Remaining” is like stained glass, “the expanding, unfolding kaleidoscope of the rose window,” as Odette puts it."
Market Watch :: two copies available. We're talking in the neighborhood of us$176.42 and UP.
By Michael LaPointe
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-...
'The critic Harold Bloom called “Time Remaining” a “sad and beautiful elegy,” and included it in the list of “permanent works” appended to his best-selling 1994 book, “The Western Canon.” It is now out of print.'
"However grim those sights, McCourt always renders them in vivid oils, never charcoal. Odette has explicit scorn for George Orwell’s notion that good prose should be like a windowpane one can see through. “See through to what—a brick wall?” “Time Remaining” is like stained glass, “the expanding, unfolding kaleidoscope of the rose window,” as Odette puts it."
Market Watch :: two copies available. We're talking in the neighborhood of us$176.42 and UP.
April 19, 2016
This was great! I'm glad I had only been able to find anecdotal stuff about McCourt before reading this (I really highly recommend reading the series of posts Dennis Cooper did about him on his blog)
But yeah, this was awesome, queeny, nostalgic. A review on here aptly compared it to William Gass (at the sentence level) but I would add without all the pock-marked misanthropy. It also kind of reminded me of Reinaldo Arenas.
But yeah, this was awesome, queeny, nostalgic. A review on here aptly compared it to William Gass (at the sentence level) but I would add without all the pock-marked misanthropy. It also kind of reminded me of Reinaldo Arenas.
May 27, 2024
I stopped after seventy-pages. My idea of hell would be to have a brain that goes on like this novel does. It ceases to be wittily entertaining, and becomes just irritating. And James McCourt needs to get out of New York more. Still, "Yuriko Mishegas" is one great drag name.
May 29, 2024
A heartbreak and a hilarity, 'Time Remaining' has been re-issued in a beautiful new edition by Rebel Sartori Press, and all of James McCourt's characters are again given life and soul. One of the seminal novels of the AIDS era, this story of that particular time and the people who populated it, and then were gone, gives tribute to the sustained courage, strength, and common love that carries us as we re-read it today.
"Drugs, dick, disco, and dish -- remember?" That's how drag queen Miss Mae Mae describes the good times, as she is on her deathbed, clutching a stuffed bear, and she marvels how suddenly those words have been replaced by 'dysentery, dementia, despair and death.' Miss Mae's final quip is relayed by Odette O'Doyle, a 'polymath drag-queen diva' to Daniel Delancey, a orphaned performance artist, as they ride the midnight train to Montauk. Odette and Delancey are the sole survivors of a raucous group of drag queens called the Eleven Against Heaven, which AIDS has decimated.
At once a story of survival, it is also a real history of a time that changed lives in ways we could not imagine. With wry humor and outrageous love, we are carried once again into the period, but now have retrospection in perspective. This is a novel of life against death, and a testament to McCourt's unique gift of storytelling -- which was truth-telling -- always. It still stands as a remarkable work of love.
"Drugs, dick, disco, and dish -- remember?" That's how drag queen Miss Mae Mae describes the good times, as she is on her deathbed, clutching a stuffed bear, and she marvels how suddenly those words have been replaced by 'dysentery, dementia, despair and death.' Miss Mae's final quip is relayed by Odette O'Doyle, a 'polymath drag-queen diva' to Daniel Delancey, a orphaned performance artist, as they ride the midnight train to Montauk. Odette and Delancey are the sole survivors of a raucous group of drag queens called the Eleven Against Heaven, which AIDS has decimated.
At once a story of survival, it is also a real history of a time that changed lives in ways we could not imagine. With wry humor and outrageous love, we are carried once again into the period, but now have retrospection in perspective. This is a novel of life against death, and a testament to McCourt's unique gift of storytelling -- which was truth-telling -- always. It still stands as a remarkable work of love.
December 3, 2018
I so wanted to enjoy this book after reading its eulogy in the New Yorker, where it was reported with sadness that it had gone out of print. But now I understand why it did; This book is a confusing mess. The author jumps around the timeline, which by itself isn’t a terrible thing, but it makes the book virtually unreadable when combined with the author’s chaotic and excruciating stream-of-thought prose. Reading this book felt like carrying on a conversation with a person suffering from Aspergers — or to borrow a phrase from the book, its torment is like being locked in a room with a queen on speed. It goes on and on and on in every which way without any attempt to effectively communicate with the reader. I plodded through 80-some pages then finally gave up. And I hate giving up on books but I had to with this one. Perhaps if you lived in NYC through the 80s and 90s and were really, really into the history of theater then you’d appreciate all the references the author makes. But without such insight it’s just a terribly painful read. Most of the time I couldn’t even keep track of the plot (if anything was actually happening) because the protagonist would go off on some crazy flight-of-mind tangent that buried the action. Sadly disappointed.
August 27, 2018
Eavesdropping on a conversations of some beautifully insightful , literate , witty people as they manage life and its tragedies. Yes, it’s about AIDS epidemic and NYC but much more.
July 18, 2024
Going to spend the rest of my life re-reading this one huh.
A lot of my favourite books feel like they give me empowerment to be weirder as a writer and this scratches that itch.
A lot of my favourite books feel like they give me empowerment to be weirder as a writer and this scratches that itch.
February 13, 2025
Wonderful book. Sort of a throwaway first story ("I go back to the Mais Oui") about the death of Jackson Pollock, but the longer second section has the author with a friend named Odette Odile ("Detta" for short) narrating a series of trips she and her six friends took to various cities, individually, mostly in Europe, on the night train to Montauk is JUST terrific.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews