Time Remaining

McCourt is nothing if not consistent. These two linked novellas give us the same characters and voices previously heard in his celebrated earlier works Kaye Wayfaring in `` Avenged'' and Mawdrew Czgowchwz. In the first novella, ``I Go Back to the Mais Oui,'' Delancy, a 40-ish gay performance artist, dramatically recollects (with Firbankian abstraction, speed-queen timing and outrageous, bitchy wit) the highlights of his life over the past 25 years. The name-dropping riff cites ``Jackson Pollock, the Kouros of Melanes, Judy Garland in her coffin at Campbell's, and Tito Gobbi as Scarpia.'' ``A Chance to Talk'' finds Delancey riding the milk train out to Easthampton, meeting and matching wits with the brilliant transvestite ballerina Odette O'Doyle, whose voice and opinions are just as kinetically pitched as Delancey's own. Age and AIDS give these frothy, entertaining evocations of New York's gay subculture all the melancholy resonance of a last call at the piano bar. To those who comprehend its nuances, this book will surely give pleasure; the rest of the reading public may be somewhat bewildered. A tour de force of high camp, Manhattan-style, this collection proves McCourt is a dazzling practitioner of the lost language of queens. (May)