Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Posted on 07/19/2009 4:16:44 PM PDT by Steelfish
Frank McCourt, Author of ‘Angela’s Ashes,’ Dies at 78
By WILLIAM GRIMES Published: July 19, 2009
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 Sunday. He was 78 and lived in Manhattan and Roxbury, Conn.
The cause was metastatic melanoma, said Mr. McCourt’s brother, the writer Malachy McCourt.
Mr. McCourt, who had taught in the city’s school system for nearly 30 years, had always told his writing students that they were their own best material. In his mid-60s, he decided to take his own advice, sitting down to commit his childhood memories to paper and producing what he described as “a modest book, modestly written.”
In it he a childhood of terrible deprivation. After Mr. McCourt’s alcoholic father abandoned the family, his mother — the Angela of the title — begged on the streets of Limerick to keep him and his three brothers meagerly fed, poorly clothed and housed in a basement flat with no bathroom and a thriving population of vermin.
The book’s clear-eyed look at childhood misery, its incongruously lilting, buoyant prose and its heartfelt urgency struck a remarkable chord with readers and critics.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Death sure hasn’t taken a holiday this summer.
One of the greatest late-bloomers in Irish, Irish-American, or American letters, take your pick, Frank McCourt was a triumph to himself, and a tribute to the
foresight and boldness of the free enterprise spirit of his first American publisher, to think that anything would come of the memoirs of a 66 year old Irish-American schoolteacher. ( of course, his better known brother Malachy, might have helped) But anyway, one of the most surprising examples of literary success I can think of.
I think Angela’s Ashes is showing on Showtime this month.
I really liked “Teacher Man”
Angela’s Ashes is a terrific book. Really, really enjoyed it. RIP Frank.
May he rest in peace. Angela’s Ashes was very hard to read for me due to the tragedy of his early life. We told the story so well that it was painful to read. I kept crying and putting the book down for a day. It was worth the struggle to go back and read more.
KGB agent Cronkite, now McCourt, who’ll be the third turd?
I enjoyed it, as well. It certainly set it in grand detail the life of deprivation his family, and many others, survived and overcame. May he now rest in eternal peace.
And he spoke at my HS graduation giving an OK speech. RIP.
Wish he have left out the Church-bashing part of his Dickensian memoir.
That is just too sad. A fine man; and a fine writer; and just a great Irishman. Prayers for all who are now suffering their loss. And prayers for Frank McCourt. God Speed!
I did not care for the book and found it very uncomfortable to read, not pleasant at all. What was to be learned from it? I suppose someone will say the triumph of the spirit...but only a glimmer of that at the end of the book, mostly grinding poverty and misery. It is not a book I would reread. The adoration of it reminds me of the cult following of Catcher in the Rye which I found to be a real load...guess I’m weird.
‘Tis a sad day.
His ‘story’ is not well-received amongst the Irish. I haven’t met anyone in Ireland yet who didn’t think Angela’s Ashes was a crock of shite.
He’s dead RIP..
His book is a bunch of crap...
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