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Frank McCourt : A writer’s life

By
CAHIR O'DOHERTY,
IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Thursday, July 23, 2009, 6:12 PM
Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 6:47 PM

 

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Frank McCourt as 'Mr Lennihan' in 'Beautiful Kid'
Frank McCourt as 'Mr Lenihan' in 'Beautiful Kid'

Frank McCourt was born in Brooklyn on August 19, 1930, the eldest son of seven children. His father Malachy (died 1985) and mother Angela (died 1981) were unable to find work in the depths of the Great Depression and eventually they made the fateful decision to return to Angela’s native Limerick, Ireland in 1934.

In Limerick, Frank’s alcoholic father – originally from Moneyglass, Co. Antrim – began to drink the little he earned, plunging the family into deeper poverty. Now living in squalor, Frank nearly died of typhoid fever at the age of 10; his sister and two of his brothers had already died of diseases associated with malnutrition and their dire living conditions.

In "Angela’s Ashes" McCourt describes an entire block of local houses sharing a single outhouse, which was flooded by the constant rain, and infested with rats and other vermin. Parents and children slept in one bed, and Malachy Senior squandered any spare money as soon as it was earned.

Soon after McCourt’s father left for Liverpool, where he found work but rarely sent money home to his family.

At 19, Frank finally left Ireland for the U.S. where he was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Germany. Upon his discharge he returned to New York City, where he used the G.I. Bill to enroll in New York University.

McCourt received his master’s degree from Brooklyn College in 1967 and taught English at McKee High School and then at the highly competitive Stuyvesant High School, where he placed a particular emphasis on creative writing and encouraged his students to engage in it.

“If you were at Stuyvesant and you wanted to write, you went to meet McCourt,” the author David Lipsky wrote recently. “It wasn’t, ‘Go read the complete works of J.D. Salinger.’ It was one word -- McCourt.”

Angela’s Ashes brought McCourt the 1997 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and millions of copies of the book were sold worldwide. In 1999 it was adapted into a movie starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle.

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