Queer Street: Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Queer Street: Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Queer Street: Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Queer Street: Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985 ReviewQueer Street advertises itself as an anecdotal history of New York's gay life in the 20th century. This is blatant misrepresentation. There are precious few anecdotes of any kind. The names went by, hundreds of them, people I've never heard of, places that have long since ceased to exist, and of which and of whom he told me nothing. If you don't already know, you're not worth his time to tell you. One thing I have gleaned about Mr. McCourt as a young man: he must have been insufferable.
An astonishing proportion of the book is endless gush over one female walking cliché after another-Bette Davis, Maria Callas, Judy Garland, and a nauseating infinitude of others (whom he refers to familiarly by their first names, though he never knew them personally). He's one of those fag hag fags. He worships women and despises them. "I don't trust any kind of woman. I say, anything that bleeds for three days and doesn't die can't be trusted." (p. 225) Okay, it's funny, albeit hateful. It's also a bit pathetic. I get this image of some aged dance queen decades from now citing Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears and Christine Aguilera as the apotheosis of gay culture in our time, and spending 600 pages to do it.
I kept reading it anyway because, to be fair, the prose really is lovely, despite some inherent problems. Apparently, McCourt's editor gave up early. There are dozens of petty typos, and sentence upon sentence that makes no syntactic sense, as if McCourt changed his mind about (or simply forgot) where it was going halfway through writing it, and never went back to look at it again.
As I read this thing, I started out bewildered; then I was infuriated; finally, I'm prepared to look at it as just another brick in the foundation wall of the Human Comedy Theatre. Lots of people have the urge to embarrass themselves in public, though few go to this extreme length to do it. It reads like forty years' worth of journal entries, blatantly self-indulgent stuff written for the author's own pleasure. That's fine. Beats watching TV. But writing such stuff is one thing, publishing it another.Queer Street: Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985 Overview

Want to learn more information about Queer Street: Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now