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.....

[Albion Wilde]

I am part Irish, but cant figure out fraction just now- dad was 3/4.

Then you are 3/8ths, unless your mam also had some in her tree...

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.

That may only be partially true for McCourt, who lived much of his adult life as a schoolteacher. He and his brother Malachy did have a bohemian life around New York as raconteurs and hangers-out in literary bars and small theaters. But the main NYT article I linked above mentions that although he hung out with with successful Irish writers, he couldn't find his own voice until after retiring from teaching at age 65:

On the side, Mr. McCourt made fitful stabs at writing. He contributed articles on Ireland to The Village Voice. He kept notebooks. But at the Lion’s Head in Greenwich Village, where he became friends with Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin, he felt like an interloper, he said. They were writers. He was just a teacher. “I had no idea he had the ambition, much less the ability to carry it off in such spectacular fashion,” [said] Mr. Hamill, who first met Mr. McCourt...in the 1960s...

Breslin revealed that over a 30-year friendship, he never really saw below the surface of Frank McCourt, his amiable drinking buddy. How that must have stung McCourt in his already-wounded pride.

This is not to say that McCourt never suffered the swelled head after his Pulitzer. It would seem that he did crave the emoluments of the world long before he got them; but lacked the self-esteem to work the tough New York scene any earlier than he did, or to take his success utterly for granted. The book's success was a huge surprise; and there is so much self-abasement in its pages along with a finely tuned ear (and a restraint against bathos that I wish the subsequent movie score had also reflected), it's hard to imagine that it was a work of selling out to make a buck. I think that once the sales figures mounted and people outside New York recognized him as a survivor and an overcomer, things changed; but not because he was courting liberal opinion.

McCourt had started out a poor Irish immigrant dockworker in a rich Jewish city. It would have been only natural to gravitate to the union-Democrat agenda of most working-class Irish in New York; so his pre-fame liberal bent was unlikely of the elite variety. In 2005, he gave an interview to Associated Press about his "overnight success" at age 66, in which he was quoted as saying,

"I wasn't prepared for it... After teaching, I was getting all this attention. They actually looked at me – people I had known for years – and they were friendly and they looked at me in a different way. And I was thinking, `All those years I was a teacher, why didn't you look at me like that then?'" ...the part of it he liked best, he said, was hearing "from all those kids who were in my classes... At least they knew that when I talked about writing I wasn't just talking through my hat."

It would seem he really cared what his students thought, and that the hypocrisy of his erstwhile friends was apparent to him. So I am hoping that McCourt, who was a prophet without honor in his own home town most of his life, and knowing he was ill, truly did seek reconciliation with the Living God before he passed on. I really, really hope that for him.

[Albion Wilde]

"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."
BINGO!!!!

To me, his disillusionment with religion as a result of the actions of callous priests towards the poor, in the most culturally Catholic country on earth, seemed a major theme of the book. For what it's worth, I did not take away from that a desire to despise the Church; but rather a pity for his estrangement from the divine — something he probably never consciously intended.

Having lived in a working-class Catholic parish in a large city, I saw for myself a great variety of priests and their skill levels — some were kind and loving; others were cold and contemptuous; some were intellectual; others not too bright. The big lesson all of us who love Christ must learn is that no man is perfect and that all earthly leaders we look up to can, and probably will, let us down. It's just that some let us down or humiliate us more than others; and when their job is to represent the love of God, it's very hard to get past:

In a 2004 interview that also included his brothers Malachy, Mike and Alphie, author Frank McCourt related,

"Once we were outside a monastery begging for food. I could smell the bread baking inside and the monk finally came out and flung some stale loaves at our feet. 'Pick it up out of the dirt, boyo,' he said, 'if you need it so bad.'"

[imintrouble]

Serendipity brought me to seeing an interview this afternoon on C-SPAN - of an interview with McCourt done in 1997.

I didn’t know of his death and wondered why it was being broadcast - but at the end of the program they gave a link to www.booktv.org which has the story and a video of the interview.

It is quite funny, sad, quirky and comes alive before your eyes - the children being born into poverty and living to share their stories - thanks to Frank for getting it started. Here is the formal announcement which has already been written about on FR - who never miss “news” happening.

Author Frank McCourt Dies

“Angela’s Ashes” author Frank McCourt died July 19, 2009, in New York City. Below is the obituary published in the Washington Post. Mr. McCourt appeared on C-SPAN’s “Booknotes” program in 1997. You can watch the video online at www.booktv.org

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071901588.html?nav=hcmoduletmv