ON LYING AND THE BRAVE MEN WHO DO IT: MCCOURT AND MORRISSEY

1 3 2 Y O N L Y I N G A N D T H E B R A V E M E N W H O D O I T T I M O T H Y Y O U N G If Sigmund Freud has given writers a body of influential texts, it may well be in the form of aphorisms – the kind that point out human weaknesses without going into the messy and confusingly precise language of psychoanalytic practice. On the craft of biography , he tells us: ‘‘When we speak about the past we lie with every breath we take. Whoever turns biographer commits himself to lies, to concealment, to hypocrisy, to embellishments, and even to dissembling his own lack of understanding. Biographical truth is not to be had, and even if one had it one could not use it.’’ This should give us pause before reading any life story, in order to weigh the unreliable nature of the storyteller. But what does it say about autobiography? The choice of perspectives becomes polarized : either the writer is a trustworthy communicator (due to having been present at all of the events recounted) or he or she is the most unreliable of narrators since there is nobody to verify or contradict the veracity of the account. L a s t i n g C i t y : T h e A n a t o m y o f N o s t a l g i a , by James McCourt (Liveright, 336 pp., $26.95) A u t o b i o g r a p h y , by Morrissey (Penguin, 464 pp., $30) 1 3 3 R James McCourt, acclaimed for his novels of sublimely idiosyncratic style and verve, has in some fashion throughout his career been crafting a long series of autobiographies. His monumental Queer Street is narrated in simultaneous first and third person by ‘‘The Author,’’ and his series of interconnected novels – from Mawrdew Czgowchwz to Now Voyagers – have all been drawn from life. Now he commits to the matter of autobiography with Lasting City, his attempt to get down on paper the facts of his first few years of life. But as it always is with McCourt, getting to the heart of the matter is tricky business because there is so much to say – and for us, the readers, to understand – about the context of the story. It’s not su≈cient to state the mere fact of his birth. So much happened before, and during, and after that needs to be taken into account in the manufacture of the story that, not surprisingly , McCourt remains in utero until halfway through the book. Faithful readers of any of McCourt’s books realize that his goal is not to relate simply the parts of a story but also the entire world in which that story resides. You may not need a Ph.D. in twentiethcentury literary, musical, performance, and philosophical culture to make your way comfortably through any of McCourt’s books, but by the time you finish one, you’ll have earned an honorary degree. Not a single page goes by without a volley of quotations, references, sly allusions, and respectful mimicry of other writers. While some of the references will be clear, many will have you running to Google to see where that clever line came from: a movie? an obscure play? another person’s autobiography? It’s not stealing, after all – it’s wry appropriation and collage. That overarching aspect of McCourt’s method, collage, is evident in the first epigraph – that aforementioned quotation from Freud. It may well represent what Freud thought, but the quotation melds two distinct statements. The first is an often-repeated phrase attributed to William Maxwell, remembering something Freud once said. The remaining sentences are from a letter Freud wrote to Arnold Zweig in 1936, in response to Zweig’s proposal to write a biography of Freud. Thus, from the very first page, McCourt melds together bits to build a new text. This is Freud as he remembers Freud. And what else he remembers is his mother’s life, his father’s 1 3 4...