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Lasting City: The Anatomy of Nostalgia
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2013
A profoundly American work with distinct echoes of Samuel Beckett, Lasting City hypnotizes with its symphonic lyricism. Enjoined by his dying mother to "tell everything," James McCourt was liberated by this deathbed wish to do just that. The result is Lasting City , a gripping, uniquely McCourt an operatic recollection that braids a nostalgic portrait of old-Irish New York with a boy’s funny, gutter-snipe precocity and hardly innocent coming-of-age in the 1940s and '50s. A literary outlaw in the poetic tradition of Verlaine and Baudelaire, McCourt tells his own story, his mother's, his family's, and that of a lost New York, the lasting city. While ostensibly an account of the author's first seven years, Lasting City expands into a philosophical exploration of memory, perhaps as daring a statement on perception as anything since Faulkner―a kaleidoscopic unraveling of time. Mating fact with fantasy, or fantasy with fact, McCourt takes us from his deeply moving bedside account of his mother Catherine’s death to its traumatic aftermaths both real and imagined, which are―as McCourt tells it―equally real. He revisits the fantasy city of his youth, sometimes in soliloquy, as well as in the plaintive threnody of an older man who recounts his tales of woe to a Hindu cabdriver named Pramit Banarjee on Broadway, only hours after leaving his mother’s bedside. By celebrating our powerlessness over memory, he explores the darkly intense Irish-American family romance and the love-hate relationship between an unusually bright boy and his eternally wise mother, who harbored an excruciating guilty secret. With Joycean panache, McCourt then takes us to the wake, where his aunts recall their sister as if they are the Fates; he has a late-night dialogue with a former showgirl turned hash-slinging waitress; and he then anticipates his own death with the some of the most lyrical cadences in recent literature, wondering whether his ashes will be scattered on the waters of that little rivulet emerging from Central Park's Ramble, where in his grandfather’s day, real Venetian gondoliers, imported from Venice, plied their trade. Reflecting McCourt's belief that "the perfectly diagrammed sentence has become the secret weapon of nice people," Lasting City , written as much for the ear as the reading eye, unfolds in multiple voices that are at times like theater and at times the reverie of a mind lost in memory. It is a heartfelt aria to a lost time and to an eternal city.
A profoundly American work with distinct echoes of Samuel Beckett, Lasting City hypnotizes with its symphonic lyricism. Enjoined by his dying mother to "tell everything," James McCourt was liberated by this deathbed wish to do just that. The result is Lasting City , a gripping, uniquely McCourt an operatic recollection that braids a nostalgic portrait of old-Irish New York with a boy’s funny, gutter-snipe precocity and hardly innocent coming-of-age in the 1940s and '50s. A literary outlaw in the poetic tradition of Verlaine and Baudelaire, McCourt tells his own story, his mother's, his family's, and that of a lost New York, the lasting city. While ostensibly an account of the author's first seven years, Lasting City expands into a philosophical exploration of memory, perhaps as daring a statement on perception as anything since Faulkner―a kaleidoscopic unraveling of time. Mating fact with fantasy, or fantasy with fact, McCourt takes us from his deeply moving bedside account of his mother Catherine’s death to its traumatic aftermaths both real and imagined, which are―as McCourt tells it―equally real. He revisits the fantasy city of his youth, sometimes in soliloquy, as well as in the plaintive threnody of an older man who recounts his tales of woe to a Hindu cabdriver named Pramit Banarjee on Broadway, only hours after leaving his mother’s bedside. By celebrating our powerlessness over memory, he explores the darkly intense Irish-American family romance and the love-hate relationship between an unusually bright boy and his eternally wise mother, who harbored an excruciating guilty secret. With Joycean panache, McCourt then takes us to the wake, where his aunts recall their sister as if they are the Fates; he has a late-night dialogue with a former showgirl turned hash-slinging waitress; and he then anticipates his own death with the some of the most lyrical cadences in recent literature, wondering whether his ashes will be scattered on the waters of that little rivulet emerging from Central Park's Ramble, where in his grandfather’s day, real Venetian gondoliers, imported from Venice, plied their trade. Reflecting McCourt's belief that "the perfectly diagrammed sentence has become the secret weapon of nice people," Lasting City , written as much for the ear as the reading eye, unfolds in multiple voices that are at times like theater and at times the reverie of a mind lost in memory. It is a heartfelt aria to a lost time and to an eternal city.
- GenresNonfiction
336 pages, Hardcover
First published October 21, 2013
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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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 14, 2016
Originally appeared in Lambda Literary
Slipping riotously through time like a virus loose in the bloodstream and touching on everything from show tunes and divas (the variety that plays the Met, not top 40 radio) to cruising spots and tanning advice, does James McCourt’s latest book, Lasting City, live up to its cheeky designation: “The anatomy of nostalgia”? Absolutely.
Any summary of a work like this requires a caveat: Summary misses the point entirely. Suffice it to say, our narrator (the author) heeds his dying mother’s advice to “tell everything.” Notably, there was no mandate to tell it chronologically. Instead, McCourt’s inventive take on the memoir organizes itself—if at all—around free-association word games, punning off of popular expressions. One memorable passage takes up the various ways Kid can be used, as in -gloves, -napped, etc. It’s equal parts Joyce and Faulkner’s Benji with a little Proust tossed in for seasoning. But at the heart of this discursive remembrance of things past is the lasting city itself. Post-war New York. Its provenance is traced and its culture catalogued. The latter most entertainingly in erudite anecdotes about the Great White Way, a scene the author’s mother, Kitty, was intimately familiar with. Like New York City, McCourt’s unconventional memoir feels like a work simultaneously complete and still in progress. It’s antic and self-referential, desperate and at peace, existing in its entirety on each page. It’s a circle. It’s a black hole. A tautology. And it’s very good, though not without its frustrations. Close reading is a requirement, as is a willingness to allow the unfamiliar to wash over you. This book is chockablock full of insider information that will reward the cultural anthropologist.
If you liked this, make sure to follow me on Goodreads for more reviews!
Slipping riotously through time like a virus loose in the bloodstream and touching on everything from show tunes and divas (the variety that plays the Met, not top 40 radio) to cruising spots and tanning advice, does James McCourt’s latest book, Lasting City, live up to its cheeky designation: “The anatomy of nostalgia”? Absolutely.
Any summary of a work like this requires a caveat: Summary misses the point entirely. Suffice it to say, our narrator (the author) heeds his dying mother’s advice to “tell everything.” Notably, there was no mandate to tell it chronologically. Instead, McCourt’s inventive take on the memoir organizes itself—if at all—around free-association word games, punning off of popular expressions. One memorable passage takes up the various ways Kid can be used, as in -gloves, -napped, etc. It’s equal parts Joyce and Faulkner’s Benji with a little Proust tossed in for seasoning. But at the heart of this discursive remembrance of things past is the lasting city itself. Post-war New York. Its provenance is traced and its culture catalogued. The latter most entertainingly in erudite anecdotes about the Great White Way, a scene the author’s mother, Kitty, was intimately familiar with. Like New York City, McCourt’s unconventional memoir feels like a work simultaneously complete and still in progress. It’s antic and self-referential, desperate and at peace, existing in its entirety on each page. It’s a circle. It’s a black hole. A tautology. And it’s very good, though not without its frustrations. Close reading is a requirement, as is a willingness to allow the unfamiliar to wash over you. This book is chockablock full of insider information that will reward the cultural anthropologist.
If you liked this, make sure to follow me on Goodreads for more reviews!
February 25, 2014
I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you for the book!
This book is simply a version of literary name dropping. I learned some interesting tidbits of New York and Broadway, but I could not tell you what this story is really about. I forced myself to keep reading through it in fairness to the author. I really wanted to quit before I was even halfway through. I love to read all genres of books, but I just could not get into this one. There were so many different tangents going off in all different directions, that it kept it from being a very effective story. I am now going to take a bunch of aspirin in hopes of getting rid of the headache I have from trying to follow along with everything going on in this book!
This book is simply a version of literary name dropping. I learned some interesting tidbits of New York and Broadway, but I could not tell you what this story is really about. I forced myself to keep reading through it in fairness to the author. I really wanted to quit before I was even halfway through. I love to read all genres of books, but I just could not get into this one. There were so many different tangents going off in all different directions, that it kept it from being a very effective story. I am now going to take a bunch of aspirin in hopes of getting rid of the headache I have from trying to follow along with everything going on in this book!
February 24, 2014
I received this copy as a Goodreads giveaway...
When someone tells me a book is poetic, in my mind I think maybe they mean it contains lyrical descriptions. That the content is observant and elegiac.
Lasting City by James McCourt is poetic. But not in the sense that it is a memoir that utilizes aspects of a poem, but that it is 300 pages of poetry.
Now I can deal with the stream of consciousness. I like the freedom that gives and being swept along in a river of thoughts. I can deal with jumping through the years with very little rhyme or reason. That can be cool--it keeps the reader alert. What crushed me like an ant under the heavy gait of a Red Wing work boot was all the obscure references. Every page had allusions to people and places and events I have never heard of. I was spending my time holding this book in one hand and calling up Wikipedia on my iphone with the other.
No joke, a sample page talks of: Pelion and Ossa, the banks of the Neversink, Eugene O'Neils play Mourning Becomes Electra, Clytemnestra, and the thesis of David Isay all without context. Mr. McCourt expects me to know all of these.
Other parts of the book refer to: Verlaine's Villes I & II, Pilate, Longinus, and oh so many more... It just became so tedious.
Now I will allow that this might have more to do with my public education and lack of knowledge, who knows...maybe I am just dumb. But for me this was not enjoyable and somewhat of a drag.
Which is a shame. The moments Mr. McCourt spent speaking of his mother and father were great. I was swept up with the nostalgic remembrance of New York City--I was there, I could see it clearly. But then came along some arcane, maybe pedantic metaphor and I was lost. Just lost.
Now I am torn by this review, all these allusions and poetic writing might be your cup of tea, in which case this is a great book. There is nothing wrong with the content. But for me, I have to give it just 2 stars.
November 23, 2023
So McCourt decided there were things he had left unsaid in Queer Street, and decided to dig deeper into his childhood in order to discuss gay culture of the 1960s. Fragments, not entirely uninteresting, and it's certainly entertaining, but of course it is. I'm not sure what the point of this book was.
February 18, 2026
Not as strong as Mardew or Time Renaming (which are carried by the dazling personalities of their narrators/subjects in a way that the format of a memoir doesn't really allow), but its high points are deeply beautiful. A little meandering at points, but maybe with time I'll come to love that about it.
April 26, 2016
Lasting City: The Anatomy of Nostalgia has a consistently maintained, very striking quality, which is evidenced on the very first page. Specifically there is a palpable, contagious energy in author James McCourt's style that is very original among my past reading experience. My preliminary edition of the book includes a paragraph on the first page that sets the stage for our hero's story thusly: "In the Beginning was the the Word, and the Word was Shazam..." I hope that line remains in the final edition firstly because I adore it but also because the exclamation Shazam! speaks to the peculiar, ebullient quality of the narration at least as well as any way I can think to describe it for you, fellow readers.
Now, I am a slow and pensive reader -- always have been -- yet the tremendous energy of McCourt's prose was not at all jarring or incompatible with my reading habits. Rather, I found I was buoyed along through the story faster than I would be otherwise due to the narration's strong pacing. I should also note that the rhythmic (this seems a particularly apt description as I write it), forcefully paced narration did not undermine the poignancy or any other substantive effect of the story during my reading. I found a number of McCourt's reflections uniquely moving in fact.
In addition to its unique & exciting narrative technique and the moving moments in stories and reflections that are shared in this memoir, the sheer wit of the author is a significant draw for this book. I recommend it highly to any reader who finds herself attracted to the work based on what she has read of the memoir's particular storyline.
Now, I am a slow and pensive reader -- always have been -- yet the tremendous energy of McCourt's prose was not at all jarring or incompatible with my reading habits. Rather, I found I was buoyed along through the story faster than I would be otherwise due to the narration's strong pacing. I should also note that the rhythmic (this seems a particularly apt description as I write it), forcefully paced narration did not undermine the poignancy or any other substantive effect of the story during my reading. I found a number of McCourt's reflections uniquely moving in fact.
In addition to its unique & exciting narrative technique and the moving moments in stories and reflections that are shared in this memoir, the sheer wit of the author is a significant draw for this book. I recommend it highly to any reader who finds herself attracted to the work based on what she has read of the memoir's particular storyline.
February 3, 2014
I was given this book by Goodreads.com as part of a First Reads giveaway.
I love to read and am open minded enough to try to read any genre. I was grateful to receive this book and I tried to read it. But I could not finish it. This is one of the rare times when I simply could not get into the story. I felt as if I was reading a bunch of word, and not a story at all. The first part I thought was going to be about the author's life as a four year old but within a few pages we are led to believe it is about the author as an adult by his mom's bedside as she is dying. I understand this was to be a story of telling about "everything" as his dying mother instructed him to do. But the over use of so many places, things, titles, books, songs, stories, etc etc, made me fail to comprehend just what the story is suppose to be. It was a hard read for me, and unfortunately I did not enjoy it as I am sure it is meant to be read.
Because I stopped reading it, I can not blame the author for a bad story, nor bad writing, but can give him credit for completing a story with lots of factual things, far more than I would have been able to recite. For that I will give a 3 star rating. Simply because I chose to stop reading does not warrant a bad, low star review, and therefore I can not give a higher star review either.
I love to read and am open minded enough to try to read any genre. I was grateful to receive this book and I tried to read it. But I could not finish it. This is one of the rare times when I simply could not get into the story. I felt as if I was reading a bunch of word, and not a story at all. The first part I thought was going to be about the author's life as a four year old but within a few pages we are led to believe it is about the author as an adult by his mom's bedside as she is dying. I understand this was to be a story of telling about "everything" as his dying mother instructed him to do. But the over use of so many places, things, titles, books, songs, stories, etc etc, made me fail to comprehend just what the story is suppose to be. It was a hard read for me, and unfortunately I did not enjoy it as I am sure it is meant to be read.
Because I stopped reading it, I can not blame the author for a bad story, nor bad writing, but can give him credit for completing a story with lots of factual things, far more than I would have been able to recite. For that I will give a 3 star rating. Simply because I chose to stop reading does not warrant a bad, low star review, and therefore I can not give a higher star review either.
March 3, 2014
This book is like a dream. The author recounts reminiscences from his life in a stream of consciousness style that mixes references from musicals and radio plays of the 1940s with all other manner of pop culture since then. McCourt is a New Yorker and so his memories are intertwined with the growing up of a city, a city which he recalls his Irish grandfather had a hand in building, literally.
Because of the blurb on the back cover from John Waters that referenced old school gay culture, I though there would be more of a history of McCourt's life as a gay man, and the different meanings that has had as culture changed around him. However, while there is some brief discussions of this sprinkled throughout the book, a surprising majority of it focuses on his early childhood and adolescence, including his terrifying, formative childhood experience hearing about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I am a true lover of New York City and so any book that offers a new way to look at the city, which this book does, will hold my interest. However, the author's dreamy style does take some patience.
Because of the blurb on the back cover from John Waters that referenced old school gay culture, I though there would be more of a history of McCourt's life as a gay man, and the different meanings that has had as culture changed around him. However, while there is some brief discussions of this sprinkled throughout the book, a surprising majority of it focuses on his early childhood and adolescence, including his terrifying, formative childhood experience hearing about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I am a true lover of New York City and so any book that offers a new way to look at the city, which this book does, will hold my interest. However, the author's dreamy style does take some patience.
February 5, 2016
Original, creative, and challenging work presented in a non-linear, free associative style. When told to "Tell everything" by his mother on her death bed, the Author as character endeavors to do just that. However, memories are singular in concept, capricious that must be reigned in or go mad. Some of the passages reminded me of that commercial for Mircosoft--speech, King Edward, famous speeches, FDR etc. Style is everything in this work. Anecdotes are colorful. Most interesting work I've read this year.
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February 15, 2014I received this book via Goodreads Giveaways. Unfortunately, the story was so difficult to follow I never finished it. After reading the first few chapters, I still had no idea as to the plot of this book. I will not be rating this book as I did not finish it.
July 14, 2016
**GoodReads First Reads Book**
The writing was great but it was way too difficult to follow and connect the various parts of this book. This made it impossible to really get into and I eventually just set it aside.
The writing was great but it was way too difficult to follow and connect the various parts of this book. This made it impossible to really get into and I eventually just set it aside.
March 13, 2014
A very cool read, way outside of my usual box but i thoroughly enjoyed it
August 28, 2014
Maybe I didn't read far enough, but I couldn't get into this book at all. Not the writer his father was.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews