Readers' Review: "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-03-21/readers-review-angelas-ashes-frank-mccourt
When teenager Frank Mccourt sailed from Ireland to America in 1949, he had nothing. With just a primary school education, he managed to attend college and eventually became a high school English teacher. For 30 years, Mccourt entertained his students with tales of his childhood in Limerick. On his last day of teaching, one student told him he should write a memoir. "Angela’s Ashes," published in 1996, vaulted Frank Mccourt from an unknown first-time writer in his sixties to a world-renowned author. It’s the story of a childhood shaped not just by poverty, but also a resilient spirit. Join Diane and her guests for our March Reader’s Review of "Angela’s Ashes."
Guests
Peter Quinn
novelist and political historian
Coilin Owens
Professor Emeritus of English, George Mason University. His latest book is titled "Before Daybreak: 'After the Race' and the Origins of Joyce's Art."
Caitriona Palmer
Washington Correspondent, The Irish Independent
Billy Collins
U.S. Poet Laureate 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at City University of New York, where he has taught for the past 30 years.
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Program Highlights
Frank McCourt called his memoir "Angela's Ashes" an epic of woe. Despite its portrayal of a wretched childhood, the book inspired millions of readers. It won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and spent 117 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
A Book That Marinated
McCourt, who taught English for many years in New York after moving to the U.S. from his childhood home of Limerick, Ireland, didn't write "Angela's Ashes" until he was 66 years old. "It was really marinated over years and years," Quinn said. "He was working on that book from the time I met him and telling the stories and refining them and turning it into the literary masterpiece it became from a stage pice really, that's how it started," Quinn said.
Writing In A Child's Voice
McCourt once said there was nothing as deadly as the detachment in a child's voice, that it's pure, and that children can tell the truth. Palmer thinks McCourt's decision to tell the story in a child's voice is key to the success of the book. "He manages to achieve the authenticity of the child's voice and in many ways, a simple syntax, repetition, the feeling of not knowing what's going on in centers of power, in the minds of his parents or in the priests' minds or the teachers," Palmer said.
Some In Limerick Resented The Book
There were some people in McCourt's hometown that accused him of lying in his memoir. Quinn said he witnessed one woman accuse McCourt of lying and when pressed about what parts of the book were untrue, she said, "There are no cobblestones in Limerick." But others, Quinn said, noted that things may even have been worse in McCourt's childhood Limerick than he described in the book.
McCourt's Impression On Writers
Collins thinks McCourt's legacy to pass on to other writers will be his handling of unhappiness. "Frank had a way of turning suffering into a kind of boast in this very comic way and leavening the sacred and the serious with a comic touch," Collines said. "No matter how miserable or oppressive the content is, we feel very protected and very protective of the narrator and warmed by his voice," Collins said.
You can read the full transcript here.
Comments
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The death of so many children in their infancy is today difficult to imagine. Part of the reason was the absence at the time of medicine (particularly vaccines) that are now routine, but another part was the appalling lack of access to any health care for the Irish poor.
I too, read this book during a post partum period in my life, and cried all the way through. In fact, even years later, I have tucked away the idea that just in case I needed an excuse for being caught crying, I could say "I've been reading Angela's Ashes". Fortunately, I have yet to need that excuse.
you are great as are shows..a welcome each morning
nit pick from earlier show:
the word if foundering like a ship wallowing uncontrolled in a huge sea and sinking..not floundering like the fish..a common tsk tsk ..
cheers john craig
Frank took a boat to get to NYC and was taken in by a priest. As I recall, the priest had expectations of Frank to "pleasure him." I am surprised that this incident didn't get more attention. Yes?
Angeles Ashes has it's place in literature, but many schools have it as required reading. I don't think it is appropriate reading for young people who have not gone through health classes that explain things like alcoholism and grief.
Who was Frank McCourt's intended audience, and why did he not use quotation marks?
Now there is the Horatio Alger Myth exposed. Boys are sexual commodities under Austerity. And boy oh boy, we have some Austerity brewing!
How much better could have Angela supported the children had she not smoked? What do the tobacco sellers owe these children?
I too read this book while pregnant with my first child. I named him Malach after Frank's brother. I had never heard this name before and realized that in Hebrew it meant angel and in Arabic it meant king. 13 years later my son chose to read this book for a memoir project at school. Every day he read it he would raise his head shaking it and say 'this is so very sad Mom I'm about to cry.'
Thank you for a wonderful discussion of this book
I am a huge fan (even though I only get to hear the show when I'm in the car and then it's only a few minutes/here/there while dropping off/picking up children. I read Angela's Ashes nearly 10 years ago. I would sit in the school office until my then preschooler would stop screaming (not an exaggeration) for me. I would take the book to keep me from running out to comfort him and take him home! Usually after 30 minutes, Joe would calm down. One day it occured to me that if Frank McCourt could survive such poverty, my son could survive Montessori preschool! Once my attitude changed, Joe was fine! I now have another preschooler at the same school and while he's doing fine, anytime I see a child (or really the mother) having a hard time adjusting, I recommend Angela's Ashes! Joe is now a freshman in high school - just wondering if anyone else has a good recommendation for me to survive these next few years!!!
I love Frank McCourt's writing. I have read Angela's Ashes 4 times. I met him when he came to Durham NC to help raise funds for our magnet high school. He came at the request of one of his former students who was teaching at our high school, I thought it was very generous of him to give his time and talent to help a former student!! I wonder why no one has brought up the issue of depression. If either Malachy, Angela or Frank, had access to anti-depressant medication, maybe the story would have been different. My brother could not get through the book, the depravation, depression, despondency, etc, humiliated him as the son of an Irish immigrant.
Coilin Owens was wonderful--lets hear more from him. Enjoyed the show!