James McCourt, _Queer Street: The Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985: Excursions in the Mind of the Life_, part the second

SO, AS I was saying, Queer Street does not seem like the history of a culture, or the history of a milieu, since its co-ordinates align almost point-for-point with those of James McCourt's own personal history. The narrative goes to England when McCourt goes to England, to Hollywood when he goes to Hollywood.

For all that, it does not seem like a memoir, either. For one thing, McCourt studiously avoids first person singular pronouns. He  refers to himself only as "the author," or as "Queer Temperament," as though he was the milieu's embodiment.

Perhaps Queer Street is like those middle volumes of Á la recherche de temps perdue, Le côté de chez Guermantes and Sodome et Gomorrhe? Those volumes are likewise about a specific scene or milieu at a certain moment in history, but likewise also definitely from the viewpoint of one particular participant observer.

What is not at all like Proust, though, is the heterogeneity of the text, which includes a Browning-esque dramatic monologue in blank verse, essays on Douglas Sirk and Raymond Carver (whom McCourt valued well before those two figures were safely canonical), and an interview with Bette Davis.

Perhaps it is Proustlike in that Queer Street is partly about McCourt's enthusiasm--save that instead of Berma we hear about Holly Woodlawn, instead of Bergotte we hear about Dennis Cooper.

No--I have to stick with my earlier view (Loads of Learned Lumber, 1/17.2020) that McCourt is quite a bit more like Joyce than he is like Proust. Impenitently allusive, encyclopedically knowledgeable about all sorts of arcana, with more syntactic resources at his command than any other dozen writers. And Irish. And Catholic.

Actually, maybe it is most like Whittaker Chambers's Witness--? An utterly sui generis American classic about a particular historical milieu at a particular historical juncture, from the point of view of a highly unorthodox intelligence who happens to be a born writer, deeply and regrettably unlikely to find its way onto any course's syllabus.