SALON

Tuesday, Jul 21, 2009 12:20 AM UTC

Remembering Frank McCourt, 1930-2009

The acclaimed author of "Angela's Ashes" resisted sentimentality, lacing his unhappy memories with humor and joy

By

Topics: Memoirs, R.I.P., Books,

Remembering Frank McCourt, 1930-2009In this Jan. 29, 1997 file photo, Frank McCourt, retired teacher and author of the best selling book "Angela's Ashes," sits during an interview in his New York apartment. Brother Malachy McCourt says Frank McCourt died Sunday afternoon July 19, 2009, at a Manhattan hospice in New York City at age 78.

Going hungry because your father drinks away the family’s dole money down at the pub. Watching helplessly as your mother struggles to provide for her family but ultimately must accept that her modest dreams are unattainable. Longing for things, like eggs, that other people might consider simple and basic, but which to you are an unaffordable luxury. These elements of a troubled childhood are all stereotypes — unless you’re actually living them.

Frank McCourt, who died July 19 at age 78, not only lived through that childhood, but wrote about it, in his evocative, tough-minded 1996 memoir “Angela’s Ashes.” McCourt was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1930, but his parents moved the family back to Ireland when McCourt was 4: His father, Malachy, had been unable to find work during the Depression, and his mother, Angela, was despondent after the death of her infant daughter, McCourt’s sister, Margaret.

Going back to the homeland in search of a better life was a bad idea, as McCourt offers in the brutally succinct first line of “Angela’s Ashes”: “My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born.” He goes on to explain:

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.

“Angela’s Ashes” was met with praise and acclaim upon its publication (it won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize, as well as the 1996 National Book Critics Circle Award). As with most hugely successful books written by first-time authors, a backlash followed. In Limerick, where the book is set, some of the locals grumbled that McCourt had made it all up. And when McCourt’s follow-up memoir, “‘Tis,” was published in 1999, many of the reviews noted that it didn’t live up to the promise of the earlier book. The idea seemed to be that McCourt wasn’t such a superb writer after all. (A third book followed in 2005, “Teacher Man,” about McCourt’s experiences teaching English in New York schools.)

But how many writers, in a lifetime, leave behind even one book as beautifully observed and deeply moving as “Angela’s Ashes” is? What makes it a great book, and not just a good one, is how staunchly it refuses sentimentality. This isn’t a nice little book in which everything works out OK in the end, nor is it a cloying weeper inviting our pity. At one point McCourt writes of stealing coins from the moneylender for whom he writes clever but threatening dunning letters:

Sometimes she falls asleep and if the purse drops to the floor I help myself to an extra few shillings for the overtime and the use of all the big new words. There will be less money for the priests and their Masses but how many Masses does a soul need and surely I’m entitled to a few pounds after the way the Church slammed the door in my face?

That passage suggests the resourcefulness and ruthlessness — as well as the sense of humor — McCourt needed to survive. “Angela’s Ashes” rings with unresolved bitterness, particularly toward the Catholic Church; in that sense, it tells a story that McCourt probably knew he could never finish. But his voice as a writer is so strong and supple, and laced so liberally with blackhearted humor, that “Angela’s Ashes” stands as a complete and whole work — not just a memoir of one specific, unhappy childhood, but a reminder that it’s the unshared experiences that often connect us.

Few of us have had childhoods as miserable as McCourt’s was. That he brought us so resolutely into his own personal sphere of unhappiness and joy is just one measure of his skill as a writer, and of his generosity.

Stephanie Zacharek is a senior writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment. More Stephanie Zacharek.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 25 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations