Delancey's Way Book

James McCourt is not to be confused with the brothers Frank and Malachy, but he, too, is an Irish American with a literary bent, an overeducated outsider's viewpoint, and a wicked gift for telling tales. Delancey's Way poses this question: Can a gay reporter from East Hampton find happiness in Washington, D.C., ostensibly lobbying on behalf of the imperiled piping plover, but mostly just crashing parties with socialite Anastasia "Bam-Bam" Harrington? (She sounds more than a bit like Arianna Huffington--unsurprising, as the book is a rather twisted roman à clef.) Instead of happiness, Delancey finds countless opportunities to comment on matters of state in the manner of Joan Rivers at the Oscars, mocking Clinton ("an outstanding chess entertainer, triumphing in blindfold games and simultaneous exhibitions"), senators ("our august lawmakers ... scurry around the Senate floor, the groups forming and reforming like amoebas in heat"), and absolutely everything that falls into his literary gun sights. Though there is a plot buried deep between the bitchy lines--culminating in the deck "Senator weds former page in gay May-December sensation"--the real point of McCourt's fourth work of fiction is nonstop intellectual vaudeville and essayistic digressions as politically incorrect as anything in Pynchon. Delancey's capital gang lives to swap wisecracks, and as they try to one-up each other's recondite witticisms, it's tough to distinguish Odette O'Doyle, a transvestite ballerina, from Rain, the phone-sex entrepreneur specializing in acts of Congress, or Vana Sprezza, the Italian opera diva, from the outrageously jive-talking Ornette James Crow. Like sock puppets manipulated by a madcap polymath, the queens hold court, razzing the powerful in relentless repartee. And if you don't happen to be a madcap polymath, the jokes may zip over your head. Say someone mentions Thermidor (the reactionary phase of the French Revolution)--expect one joke about The Big Heat and another about lobsters. When it comes to puns in questionable taste, McCourt can resist anything but temptation. --Tim AppeloRead More