James McCourt (writer)
James McCourt is an American writer, known for his "extended fictions" featuring an overlapping, recurring cast of often camp and bizarre characters. His notable works include his debut fiction Mawrdew Czgowchwz, Kaye Wayfaring in "Avenged": Four Stories and nonfiction Queer Street.
Work
McCourt was raised in Jackson Heights, Queens. McCourt has been with his life partner, novelist Vincent Virga, since 1964 after they met at Yale University as graduate students in the Yale School of Drama.McCourt is best known for his extravagant debut Mawrdew Czgowchwz, about a fictional opera diva. Regarding his first book, he once told the New York Times Book Review: "Nowhere on the book does it say it's a novel. In a novel, something is wrapped up, it finishes. But my stories just stop. Sure, Mawrdew Czgowchwz is an extended fiction, but it never wraps up." McCourt went on: "A novel is something I don't get around to doing or don't want to do. I'm writing about this extended tribe of people, instead of writing about a family as J.D. Salinger does." His Now Voyagers is the first in a series of projected sequels to Mawrdew Czgowchwz.
McCourt has garnered praise from critics Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom and has been championed by author Dennis Cooper. Sontag directed McCourt's Mawrdew Czgowchwz to her publisher's attention, while Bloom named a later work, Time Remaining, to his influential Western Canon.
McCourt's and Virga's papers are held at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.