Frank McCourt, Whose Irish Childhood Illuminated His Prose, Is Dead at 78

New York Times ^ | July 19, 2009 | William Grimes

[Albion Wilde]

Frank McCourt, a former New York City schoolteacher who turned his miserable childhood in Limerick, Ireland, into a phenomenally popular, Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Angela’s Ashes, died in Manhattan on Sunday.....

[knittnmom]

Thanks for the clarification

[Albion Wilde]

I knew Frank and am saddened by his death....

I'm sorry for your loss. Thanks for adding your first-hand account. I think the success of his book surprised him more than anyone.

[knittnmom]

Thanks - I’m thinking I need to add that one to my reading list.

[Albion Wilde]

There once was an author from limerick...

There once was a former Limerick's son
Who wrote of his mother's affliction
He created a quandary
From Eire's dirty laundry
Was it memoir? Or was it non-fiction?

[Albion Wilde]

That’s one thing I never did understand, his mothers affinity for “fags” (cigarettes). I know it was a stressful life and that would help but if you’re that poor and your children are that hungry, seems like there are priorities and “fags” aren’t one.

I think we all wish we were morally perfect, with no failures or human needs. Nicotine is an addiction and a "high" that was more affordable way back in the day before the ghastly high WWII post-war taxation. It could have been worse -- she could also have been an alcoholic like her husband. As it was, her "ashes" formed a continuous and multi-level metaphor for a book that will be read for decades to come.

[diefree]

One of the Irish girls who stayed with us for two weeks of free bed and board lectured us on her last day. We used too much electricity, we left lights and air-conditioning on in unoccupied rooms, etc., etc. Not only that, George Bush failed miserably with the hurricane. Americans are selfish, using up most of the world’s resources.

She and her friend never contributed one thing during their stay; not a piece of cake, not a bottle of soda.

So rude.

[driftless2]

"ten times as many"

Closer to one hundred times. Ireland has only a little over four million people. The wife and just visited there, and tried to avoid political talk. Naturally at a B&B a man from South Africa asked us how we liked him. I informed him that we wished him the best, but my politics were conservative. I hoped the guy, who seemed very friendly, understood what I said.

[Albion Wilde]

One of the Irish girls who stayed with us for two weeks of free bed and board lectured us on her last day. We used too much electricity, we left lights and air-conditioning on in unoccupied rooms, etc., etc. Not only that, George Bush failed miserably with the hurricane. Americans are selfish, using up most of the world’s resources. She and her friend never contributed one thing during their stay; not a piece of cake, not a bottle of soda. So rude.

I agree; and perhaps your experiences have colored your view of the book. Europeans have been completely indoctrinated to hate and envy us, and I have met crashing hate-America boors in most European countries except Italy every time I've been there -- but also some lovely folks who were welcoming and reasonable. I'm sorry you had that experience with your Irish lodgers. However, I regard it as separate from the book, which took place largely before WWII.

[Albion Wilde]

"ten times as many"
Closer to one hundred times. Ireland has only a little over four million people

Ooops! -- thanks for catching that.

[Albion Wilde]

Naturally at a B&B a man from South Africa asked us how we liked him.

I assume you mean BHO.

[diefree]

No, one doesn’t have anything to do with the other. I read his book when it came out. I liked the book but I didn’t believe everything he said. I figured it was a child’s memory and he didn’t know everything that was happening.

My experience with today’s Irish is that they seem to be all left-wing nuts. I know a lot of them, Irish students who live in Ireland along with Irish legal and illegals immigrants who are here.

[driftless2]

Yes, sorry for leaving you guessing. Interestingly enough the guy was very talkative about the new South African president, Zuma. He didn’t like him.

[Titus-Maximus]

BINGO!!!!

[firebrand]

Nevertheless, both major McCourts are/were vehemently anticleric, a frequent Irish trait, and verge on anti-Catholic.

[Albion Wilde]

Nevertheless, both major McCourts are/were vehemently anticleric, a frequent Irish trait, and verge on anti-Catholic.

It's true. I cannot stand Malachy and whenever he is on tv, I switch it. But Frank to me was more complex. His long-practiced narratives about his experiences blunted the raw pain of them over the years, and by the time we read them, they were almost funny anecdotes. As the great Carol Burnett has said, "Comedy is tragedy plus time." But they may remain unfunny in the heart of the one abused, even if he forgave them or made light of them.

In 'Tis, McCourt described an attempted molestation by a priest when he first arrived in America as a somewhat naive 18-year-old. For all we know, it was more than an attempt, and doubtless quite traumatic, just when he thought he was getting out of the woods. Or the story could have been symbolic of what many Irish children experienced. Assuming it was true, that incident and his negative childhood experiences with the local clerics were what I would call "unhealed." The Catholic Church did not begin to address publicly the emotional wounds caused by priest abuse until the past decade. Ireland is only now coming to terms with clergy abuses:
Ireland's Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Releases Final Report (Clergy Abuse News, May 22, 2009)

I am not trying to re-indict the Catholic Church; I believe that the media give schoolteachers a pass on abuse that they would dwell on if it comes from the clergy. But the clergy do have a special obligation to be the ambassadors for Christ's mercy in this world. I can only imagine the confusion the child Frank McCourt might have experienced when shame was combined with the neglect and indignity of poverty due to the father's abandonment, intensified by his role as the oldest, and the "man of the house" after his father left -- a role too big for a child and about which he doubtless suffered resentment, and guilt for leaving his mother, as well. It can make an impressionable child or youth think that the entire morality of the community is based on hypocrisy. That is why those moments he wrote about in which priests understood him sang out to me, even if he did not recognize them himself as tenuous anchors to truth (speaking here about his look of surprise when I pointed one of them out to him-- see post 29).

That said, as one becomes an adult, there is no excuse for laziness about settling spiritual questions by reading the scriptures and making a personal confession. I have been thinking so much about whether in his last years, knowing he had a terrible illness, he straightened out his thinking. ("re-pented"). I do hope so. His book no doubt had helped so many Irish and Irish-Americans to understand their difficult relatives and their tough-it-out mentality -- it did me.

Thanks for your post.

[Albion Wilde]

From: TIME.com: Frank McCourt, Author of Angela's Ashes, Dies

...For many years, McCourt tried and failed to write about his childhood. ...The psychological weight of his past may have weighed him down. It also took a toll on his personal life; first one, then a second marriage ended in divorce. (He was married a third time, happily and permanently, in 1994. He left the Catholic Church too, and the split was not amicable. "I was so angry for so long, I could hardly have a conversation without getting into an argument," he said. "It was only when I felt I could finally distance myself from my past that I began to write about what happened."[emphasis mine]

...Angela's Ashes... appeared in 1996, when McCourt was 66. The book told the story of his early years in a voice purged of anger and bitterness and self-pity. In an extraordinary act of forgiveness, he wrote about his father with humor and even compassion. ... "My dream was to have a Library of Congress catalog number, that's all," McCourt said. But it became first a critical sensation, then a runaway best seller....McCourt won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize....

...Fame and fortune transformed McCourt's last years. He bought a second home in Connecticut, next door to Arthur Miller. There is now an Angela's Ashes walking tour in Limerick, and the university there awarded him a doctorate. He spent three months as a writer-in-residence in London, at the Savoy Hotel, and another term at the American Academy in Rome (during that time, he met Pope John Paul II and rather embarrassedly knelt and kissed his ring).... [emphasis mine]

[Albion Wilde]

McCourt brothers: Malachy, Alphie, Mike and Frank.

Toronto Star: Frank McCourt had wisdom to look back
"Author had a love-hate relationship with Ireland after...his toxic...childhood..."

Mitch Albom: A Tribute to Frank McCourt
Author Albom played in a band with McCourt in New York

When Irish Tongues Are Talking
March 27, 2007: Slate asked a group of memoir writers, including McCourt: How do you choose to alert people who appear in your books that you are writing about them? His reply;

...Most of the people in Ashes were dead (still are)...though I once—only once—mentioned what I was writing to my brother, Malachy. When the book was published in Ireland, I was denounced from hill, pulpit, and barstool. Certain citizens claimed I had disgraced the fair name of the city of Limerick, that I had attacked the church, that I had despoiled my mother's name, and that if I returned to Limerick, I would surely be found hanging from a lamppost....'Tis was trickier. My publisher had me change certain names and alter certain scenes for fear of offending the sensibilities of teaching colleagues... I also had to be careful about comments on my first marriage. There be dragons.

[Albion Wilde]

New posts 55, 56 and 57 respond to many of your comments, pro and con, about McCourt's love/hate relationship to Catholicism, and give additional details at the links. Thanks to all who have participated in discussing this impactful book and what it may, or may not, have signified.

[PghBaldy]

I am part Irish, but cant figure out fraction just now- dad was 3/4. It has occurred to me more and more that whomever is praised greatly in society tends to fit in with what the liberal elites think, or reinforces their world view, otherwise they would not be so praised.

[BunnySlippers]

Liberals are professional victims.