As part of my ongoing research on the Christopher Street scene (see my various essays on Michael Denneny, an early presence at the magazine and founder of its fellow-traveling line of gay books on the gay imprint of St Martin’s Press, Stonewall Inn Editions) I’ve been reading
Have you read anything by James McCourt? He had some stories published in the New Yorker in the late 70s / early 80s. His later work I think is so close to you in its defense of a specifically gay male culture with its own particular taste and attendant political sensibility (he even has some similar insults to you), but I half suspect you’d find him insufferable
So I read some of Mawrdew Czgowchwz and as you guess hated it lol... but I had no idea he was writing in the New Yorker! I'll have to check out his stories for it. Also had definitely not thought, on the basis of reading MC, of him as a similar 'type' to me but this would be hilarious if true! Anything of his later stuff you'd recommend?
I’d maybe give Time Remaining a try. It’s a series of monologues about gay life circa 1991, perhaps comparable to the great monologue in Dancer from the Dance that ends with Malone telling Sutherland that at least they’re good dancers and what could be more important than that? It’s written in a heightened, catty, digressive style that can be grating to read for lengthy intervals, but I often find it surprisingly poignant. For example, there’s a scene where a character gets into an argument with a French professor who thinks Henry James is a better writer than Proust, which he refuses to accept because (you gather after pages of back-and-forth dialogue) he can’t stand the thought that the friends he lost to AIDS were so many Strethers who never quite learned to live. Better to throw yourself into some disastrous love affair than resign yourself to that (his drag name is Odette).
The whole book is like this—relentlessly, tiresomely digressive, but always referring back to what McCourt never lets you forget were real people and a real world (unlike MC). And that means he ends up mapping the tastes, pleasures, politics, and internecine disputes of that world, which he mourns, celebrates, satirizes, and hopes to further. (His book Queer Street takes this to a ludicrous extreme as practically the whole thing is snippets of overheard dialogue and bitchy commentary, which makes it a fun reference but exhausting to read.)
Anyway, all that to say that despite a difference in temperament, I get the sense that you and him are ultimately talking about the same thing.
Have you read anything by James McCourt? He had some stories published in the New Yorker in the late 70s / early 80s. His later work I think is so close to you in its defense of a specifically gay male culture with its own particular taste and attendant political sensibility (he even has some similar insults to you), but I half suspect you’d find him insufferable
So I read some of Mawrdew Czgowchwz and as you guess hated it lol... but I had no idea he was writing in the New Yorker! I'll have to check out his stories for it. Also had definitely not thought, on the basis of reading MC, of him as a similar 'type' to me but this would be hilarious if true! Anything of his later stuff you'd recommend?
I’d maybe give Time Remaining a try. It’s a series of monologues about gay life circa 1991, perhaps comparable to the great monologue in Dancer from the Dance that ends with Malone telling Sutherland that at least they’re good dancers and what could be more important than that? It’s written in a heightened, catty, digressive style that can be grating to read for lengthy intervals, but I often find it surprisingly poignant. For example, there’s a scene where a character gets into an argument with a French professor who thinks Henry James is a better writer than Proust, which he refuses to accept because (you gather after pages of back-and-forth dialogue) he can’t stand the thought that the friends he lost to AIDS were so many Strethers who never quite learned to live. Better to throw yourself into some disastrous love affair than resign yourself to that (his drag name is Odette).
The whole book is like this—relentlessly, tiresomely digressive, but always referring back to what McCourt never lets you forget were real people and a real world (unlike MC). And that means he ends up mapping the tastes, pleasures, politics, and internecine disputes of that world, which he mourns, celebrates, satirizes, and hopes to further. (His book Queer Street takes this to a ludicrous extreme as practically the whole thing is snippets of overheard dialogue and bitchy commentary, which makes it a fun reference but exhausting to read.)
Anyway, all that to say that despite a difference in temperament, I get the sense that you and him are ultimately talking about the same thing.
Oh this sounds great! Will circle back once I've read it (send me an email @ b_e_smith@outlook.com so I can follow up)