Lasting City: The Anatomy of Nostalgia [Paperback]

The blood-red of Manhattan, the brilliant green of an Irish-American wake, the blue-rinsed divas of the opera and the bathhouse alike (Michael Gorra) are hypnotically rendered in this astoundingly smart book (John Waters). With some of the most lyrical cadences in recent literature, the legendary James McCourt animates twentieth-century New York through a kaleidoscope of sharp-edged, brilliantly colored memories (J. D. McClatchy) and with dynamic prose and high-brow erudition that has gone the way of the dodo (A Turned by a masters hand, this kaleidoscope of sharp-edged, brilliantly colored memories continually shifts and shines, resolving at last into a grand parable of a soul in the city. Sly, scandalousand sensational! In In this virtuosic meta-memoir, author McCourt careens along the course of his life while exposing the voluble convolutions of his troubled Irish-Catholic family and documenting several long-lost New Yorks&. The allure of this book is McCourts dynamic prose and high-brow erudition that has gone the way of the dodo. McCourt has preserved on paper the intellectual climate that helped to make New York City the edgy capital of the 20th Century. A creatively executed memoir rekindling the epoch of an eccentric native New Yorker. &An artful tapestry of fever-dreamed conversations, nostalgic poignancy and rich Gotham history&. McCourts drifting, serpentine narrative unfurls a lush and prideful profile, painstakingly contemplated and clearly written from the heart. The writer tells the stories of his gay youth, his familys melodrama and his own sweet maturation with an intoxicating amalgam of poetry, quotation, fantasy, and the kind of sweeping, colorful language that creates a kaleidoscope of precious memories&. Vibrantly, blissfully sublime. In this lucid, lyrical memoir, McCourt blends the cosmopolitan facticity ofUS