McCourt’s Magic Touch

After almost 18 months on the New York Times bestseller list, Angela’s Ashes is still up there in the top five, dancing around form number one down to two or three, maybe hitting on four for a spot, but then working its way back up to the first or second spot.

Across the Atlantic in Ireland, the hardcover and the paperback versions are both selling like hot cakes, consistently showing up among the top five bestsellers.

It’s the book Pete Hamill said would still be around, being read “when all of us are gone,” and he seems to have hit the nail right on the head.

In an interview with Irish America last July, McCourt said he felt his 15 minutes of fame were “about up.” Not only is that not the case, but the fame thing is likely to pick up even more steam between now and the as yet unknown publication date of McCourt’s second book, the follow-up to the one which won him the Pulitzer Prize.

It’s a book his fans have been waiting for with bated breath, but with such a hard act to follow, who can blame the author for keeping us waiting? In a 1996 interview with Irish America, when asked when his next book would appear, he teasingly said: “I had a dream about James Joyce’s birthday, February 2, 1997, but I’ll have to postpone that. Maybe St. Francis of Assisi’s birthday, October 4, 1997. Francis is my man.” Well, 1997 came and went and no sign, so maybe we should be looking at October 4, 1998…

Reviewing Angela’s Ashes for this publication in 1996, Pete Hamill memorably said: “Frank McCourt has examined his ferocious childhood, walked around it, relived it, and with skill and care and generosity of heart, has transformed it into a triumphant work of art.”

But Angela’s Ashes is more even than a work of art. It is a heartening memorial to the indomitable spirit of a scruffy little kid from the back lanes of Limerick. A kid who took all of the lemons life handed him, and turned around to serve the most satisfying lemonade imaginable, alternately sweet and tart in all the right places.

McCourt’s raw courage in committing even the most painful memories to paper spurred a whole new trend in the publishing industry as entertainment personalities and authors rushed to commit their life stories to paper.

Angela’s Ashes is a heartening memorial to the indomitable spirit of a scruffy little Limerick kid who took all of the lemons life handed him, and turned around to serve the most satisfying lemonade imaginable, alternately sweet and tart in all the right places.”

Often copied, never equaled is perhaps the maxim most applicable to this turn of events. For as McCourt himself pointed out on the opening page of his masterpiece: “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 again is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”

There were, of course, the detractors, those who could not condemn loud enough nor disclaim fast enough. “Not the Limerick we knew,” they protested, perhaps too long and hard. “We beg to differ,” replied the McCourt brothers. For every naysayer there were a hundred, a thousand even, champions ready to defend their hero, Limerick natives included, who said not only had McCourt given a truthful account of events, but that he had been too kind.

According to Limerick bookseller David O’Mahony, Angela’s Ashes has been the biggest-selling title “of all time” at O’Mahony’s book store. And O’Mahony is quick to point out that such phenomenal sales are ample evidence that there has not been much hostility towards Angela’s Ashes or Frank McCourt in Limerick.

Although McCourt’s mother Angela, father Malachy and younger siblings undoubtedly provided the literary fuel which eventually fed the tale of Angela’s Ashes, it was a newer member of his family who finally opened the floodgates which brought forth the manuscript. Wife Ellen Frey, a New York publicist whom Frank married in 1995, was amazed to see her new husband put pen to paper on the first morning of the couple’s honeymoon in Pennsylvania. “Here was I thinking I was getting married to a recently-retired high school teacher,” she recalled, “and suddenly he’s an author.” McCourt has one daughter from an earlier marriage, and a granddaughter.

So what’s next? A film version of Angela’s Ashes is in the works which will, no doubt, serve to send the book shooting back up the bestseller lists, and McCourt is still scribbling away, putting the final touches, one hopes, to a sequel.

Film makers from Paramount Pictures are due in Limerick any day now to scout locations for the upcoming shooting. Frank’s brother Malachy told the Limerick Leader recently that depending on the availability of suitable locations, Paramount had already made the decision to do as much shooting as possible in Limerick.

Said Malachy: “Frank requested that this be done and he has also insisted that as many Irish and local actors and actresses be considered for parts in the film.”

For one great book, and the hope of many more to come, Irish America magazine is proud to hail Frank McCourt, writer extraordinaire, as our 1998 Irish American of the Year.

 

 

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the March / April 1998 issue of Irish America. ⬥