Canning, R. (2014) An Irish novelist lands in New York: James McCourt's Lasting City. The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide. 21(1) 1532-1118.
- Information
Information
Abstract:
Book review of Lasting City: the Anatomy of Nostalgia, by James McCourt. Lasting City picks up from McCourt’s birth on July 4th, 1941, and (sort of) recounts his first five years in Jackson Heights, Queens, and in Northport, Long Island. But the real obsession, as in Queer Street, is with his early discovery of “the City”—Manhattan—and its utterly sui generis inhabitants. Nostalgia informs the journey, as the subtitle allows. The trigger of memory reorders a life story, since early incidents only reverberate now because they’re being reframed by later events. Wordsworth first noted that “the Child is father of the Man.” McCourt deploys his childhood to offer a journey through seven decades, since childhood can only be recalled by retracing this journey in the mind. His epigraph, from Freud, confirms this: “When we speak about the past we lie with every breath we take. Whoever turns biographer commits himself to lies, to concealment, to hypocrisy, to embellishments, and even to dissembling his own lack of understanding.”
Uncontrolled Keywords:
James McCourt, Lasting City, New York, gay, Richard Canning
Subjects:
Creators:
Canning, R.
Publisher:
The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide
Faculties, Divisions and Institutes:
University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing
University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Research Centre > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
Faculties > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing
Research Centres > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Research Centre > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
Faculties > Faculty of Education & Humanities > English and Creative Writing
Research Centres > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
Date:
1 January 2014
Date Type:
Publication
Journal or Publication Title:
The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide
Volume:
21
Number:
1
Language:
English
ISSN:
1532-1118
Status:
Published / Disseminated
Refereed:
No
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