By: Vickie J. Rubinson
Frank McCourt, the beloved raconteur and former public school teacher who wrote "Angela's Ashes," the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir about his impoverished Irish childhood, died Sunday of cancer.
McCourt, who was 78, had been gravely ill with meningitis and recently was treated for melanoma the deadliest form of skin cancer, his brother Malachy McCourt said.
Until his mid-60's, McCourt was known primarily around New York as a creative writing teacher and as a local character--the kind who might turn up in a New York novel--singing songs and telling stories with his younger brother Malachy at the White Horse Tavern and other literary hangouts.
With a first printing of just 25,000, "Angela's Ashes" was an instant favorite with critics and readers.
"F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives. I think I've proven him wrong" McCourt later explained. "And all because I refused to settle for a one-act existence, the 30 years I taught English in various New York City high schools."
His parents were so poor that they returned to their native Ireland when he was a little boy and settled in the slums of Limerick. Simply surviving his childhood was a tale; McCourt's father was an alcoholic who drank up the little money his family had. Three of McCourt's seven siblings died and he nearly perished from typhoid fever.
"Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood," was McCourt's unforgettable opening. "People everywhere complain and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version of the poverty, the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests, bullying schoolmaster; the English and all the terrible things they did to use for 800 long years."
Frank McCourt, the beloved raconteur and former public school teacher who wrote "Angela's Ashes," the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir about his impoverished Irish childhood, died Sunday of cancer.
McCourt, who was 78, had been gravely ill with meningitis and recently was treated for melanoma the deadliest form of skin cancer, his brother Malachy McCourt said.
Until his mid-60's, McCourt was known primarily around New York as a creative writing teacher and as a local character--the kind who might turn up in a New York novel--singing songs and telling stories with his younger brother Malachy at the White Horse Tavern and other literary hangouts.
With a first printing of just 25,000, "Angela's Ashes" was an instant favorite with critics and readers.
"F. Scott Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives. I think I've proven him wrong" McCourt later explained. "And all because I refused to settle for a one-act existence, the 30 years I taught English in various New York City high schools."
His parents were so poor that they returned to their native Ireland when he was a little boy and settled in the slums of Limerick. Simply surviving his childhood was a tale; McCourt's father was an alcoholic who drank up the little money his family had. Three of McCourt's seven siblings died and he nearly perished from typhoid fever.
"Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood," was McCourt's unforgettable opening. "People everywhere complain and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version of the poverty, the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests, bullying schoolmaster; the English and all the terrible things they did to use for 800 long years."
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