McCourt's Ashes

A roundup.

Immeasurable Awe
"Frank McCourt would have left this world full of accomplishment and regard had he never written a word, at least not for publication. That he survived the poverty and misery of his childhood, let alone wrote about it in such memorable and heart-piercing prose, stands out decades later as an act worthy of immeasurable awe," the Albany Times-Union writes.

Aged Perfection
"Like a rare Scotch that has aged for a lifetime in an oaken wine cask, the story that Frank McCourt served up in Angela's Ashes had aged in his bones until the moment of perfection had been reached," Tom Phelan writes in Newsday.

"At the age of 66 he threw Angela's Ashes into the wind with a 'like it or hate it' bravado and caused a publishing sensation. Critics loved the book. Millions of readers adored it. And yet more than a few despised it, because McCourt refused to polish the picture of the Ireland he grew up in - a country where fathers got drunk while their children went unfed, where living conditions were often dire, and where the clergy were often pompous fools."

Epic Journey
"His journey from poverty-stricken emigrant to literary star was epic and wholly American: many Americans took him to their hearts, though the Irish were much less accommodating," the Guardian writes.

"However, fame and wealth did not go to McCourt's head: he remained to the end a genial, humorous, ironical, sceptical Irishman; witty, wry, charming and helpful to others, especially the young. He had an unswerving, almost utopian, belief in the value of education and its centrality in the culture, which he advocated all his life."

Divided Limerick
"Bitterness over Frank McCourt's memoir Angela's Ashes still continues in his hometown of Limerick. Residents of the western Irish city have never agreed on whether his Pulitzer-winning account of childhood survival amid soul-crushing poverty was more fact than fiction," AP reports.

"Limerick City Hall opened a book of condolence in memory of its most famous writer Monday, the day after McCourt's death and 13 years after Angela's Ashes put the city by the River Shannon on the literary map."

In His Own Words
"Of course you embellish and of course, you have fill in the blank spots of conversation," he told the Limerick Leader. "Nobody can argue with me, because these things happened in my family and these things happened in my head. There were things that happened to me which were beyond anyone's understanding or experience, so it's my story. They can argue as much as they like but I wouldn't dare intrude on their story."

Six Words
From Frank McCourt.

Education Reform
"When you do see . . . a panel on education, you see someone from the board of education, you see a professor of education, or you see a bureaucrat, someone from a think tank, a politician, but never a teacher," he once said. "Never. Imagine a panel on medicine without a doctor? The uproar there would be from the medical profession!

"But all the politicians think they own education . . . The politicians have the keys to the educational system, they control the purse strings, and they don't have a clue about what education is. I know they've been to school and all themselves, but what goes on in the classroom is another story."

Teacher Man
"My students forged the notes. I turned them into a lesson plan."

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