Monday's Body of Work

Despite our best efforts to evoke the Monday sun, we are met with the lingering gloom of the weekend.  Said gloom arrives in the form of death: Mr. McCourt, you are charged. Of course you were not a seminal American author, nor an Irish one. Of course your efforts were described as part Hallmark, part Proust. Nonetheless, we swing our sword through the misty thicket and salute you. Frank, we put back a slug of Jamesons for you. Today we honor your writing, legacy, and mind a bit all the delineations that come what may shiver past the bone of life and gnaw into a dead man’s grave with brutal hunger. Got that? Nah, you don’t. That’s called spontaneity. A practice pressed in today’s virtual paper. Anyway, once we were privileged by Mike McCourt — Frank’s bro — in a San Francisco bar. From our conversation now one thing rings in 0ur weepy ears. Tale-wise, Mike was hirsute: “Frank is a great storyteller, and our story has to be told. But he has forgotten things in his attempt to remember.” Ah, me. Shall do we all. Down the hatch, Frank. And to you all we bid brief Mondays and rowdy, roundabout brawls. — Kevin Murphy

– Mr. McCourt, who taught in the city’s school system for nearly 30 years, had always told his writing students that they were their own best material. In his mid-60s, he decided to take his own advice, sitting down to commit his childhood memories to paper and producing what he described as “a modest book, modestly written.” — Frank McCourt in the NYTimes

– We don’t like our kids. This is a country, this is a nation of people who don’t like their kids. Therefore, the teachers are baby sitters. We don’t look at teachers as scholars the way they do in Europe. In Spain you’re called a professor if you’re a high school teacher, and they pay teachers, they pay teachers in Europe. We don’t here. — McCourt on Teaching in PBS

– “I watched him sign his name in thousands of books,” says Patricia Eisemann, former publicity director of Scribner, McCourt’s publisher. “But of all the people who came to the readings, he was happiest when he’d hear, ‘Hello Mr. McCourt,’ and he’d look up and find a former student. That’s when his ever present smile grew wider.” In 1999, at a book party for ‘Tis, he said was having the decade of his life — at 69. — McCourt on Celebrity in Off the Kuff

– Having sold more than 4 million copies of Angela’s Ashes in more than 20 languages, McCourt is not only the most beloved teacher in America and maybe the world but also the most widely-read education expert too. Journalists call him up for his opinions on vouchers (he’s against them) and teachers unions (he’s for them, but thinks they’re too bureaucratic). — McCourt on Unions in Slate

– I was haunted by the first book. Now I’m haunted by the second….the miserable 20s. I wasn’t equipped to handle America — or women. Poverty robs you of self esteem, and that makes you angry. I always got into fights — drunk or sober. — McCourt on Spontaneity in Book Reporter

Video: Frank McCourt Telling It Like It Is