Posted on 07/20/2009 9:18:39 AM PDT by 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.....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood...."
And who educated him and saved his life?
Good heavens . . . he sounds like a whiny-@ssed, professional malcontent.
He autographed a copy that I dedicated to my Irish grandparents.I said that the his writing reminded me of
my favorite author.I said that I hoped he didn’t mind being
compared to an Englishman-Charles Dickens.He just laughed
and said in that case no.
Angela’s Ashes was a very good read.
Well, his sister died of malnutrition. I think he probably had a good right to complain about his childhood. Read the book, it’s awesome.
You can have a tough childhood anywhere. Lots of people have them.
But you can have a tough childhood loving and being loved, and if you do it makes all the difference.
Very dark, but yes, a good book.
I read his others as well, 'Tis and Teacher Man.
In contrast, bis brother Malachy's book, A Monk Swimming was full of inteersting and off-beat characters.
His family (just the mom and kids) were starving to death in Ireland and emigrated, I think they left the drunk dad behind - been many years since I read the book. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps, got an education and did very well for himself.
In the article, it says he stole bread and milk to survive, and a public college accepted him in spite of his meager education to that point.
If I remember correctly, he basically just had a drunken bum of a father. I don't know what Ireland or Irish Catholicism had to do with it.
Frank McCourt was born in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of seven children of Malachy (died 1985) and Angela McCourt (died 1981).[1]Unable to find work in the depths of the Depression, the McCourts returned to their mother's native Limerick, Ireland in 1934, where they sank deeper into poverty. [2] McCourt's father, an alcoholic who was often without work, drank up what little money he earned. When McCourt was eleven, his father left with other Irishmen to find work in the factories of wartime Liverpool. He sent little money to the family, leaving Frank's mother to raise four surviving children. After quitting school at the age of thirteen, Frank held odd jobs and stole bread and milk in an effort to provide for his mother and three surviving brothers, Malachy, Michael (who now lives in San Francisco), and Alphonsus ("Alphie") (who lives in Manhattan). The three other siblings died of diseases related to malnutrition and the squalor of their surroundings. Frank McCourt himself nearly died of typhoid fever when he was ten.[citation needed] In Angela's Ashes, McCourt described an entire block of houses sharing a single outhouse, flooded by constant rain, and infested with rats and vermin.[citation needed
I’m a Dickens fan, but I never liked Angela’s Ashes. To me, it seemed like a piece of anti-Catholic bigotry. Which was why it was so popular among the NYTimes book reviwers and leftist intellectuals.
To quote from the text below the photo:
“Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood....”
Well, sorry, but that’s a load of horse manure. Having a drunken father is tough, but it doesn’t require you to join the liberal establishment and curse the Irish and the Catholic Church.
Ping!
He went to Catholic grammar school. He had TB I believe and was taken care of in a Catholic hospital.
I knew Angela; did Frank McCourt? - Angela McCourt, mother of author Frank McCourt http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_n19_v124/ai_20227028/?tag=content;col1
It was the Great Depression. Just about everyone was hungry.
If you haven't read it, you really can't say. He aptly described a childhood of the most grinding poverty imaginable, complicated by his father's alcoholism and the deaths of three of his 7 siblings, with humor, wit and survivor's acuteness. The quote is from page 1 of the book, and if you are of Irish extraction, you recognize the dry irony of the sentence, not whining.
Geez lighten up. It’s obvious his book is framed with humor. He complains about his childhood the way I complain about Boy Scout camp.
Three younger siblings died, all as a result of illness stemming from the family's condition of abject poverty. As the oldest, he witnessed these tragedies up close in his young childhood.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.