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catman
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
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 Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2009 5:01 pm Post subject: Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes, Dies |
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For most of his life, until he was well into his 60s, Frank McCourt wasn't a writer, he was a teacher. But it is as a writer, the author of the wildly successful memoir Angela's Ashes, that he will be remembered. He died on Sunday in New York of meningitis. He was 78 years old.
McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1930 � he would later, much later, memorably describe the scene of his conception in his memoir � but he grew up in Ireland. His parents were both Irish immigrants, and they moved back there, to Limerick, in an effort to stay ahead of McCourt's father's drinking problem. They didn't succeed. Malachy, Frank's father, worked intermittently as a laborer, but he drank constantly.
McCourt was the first of seven children whom their mother, Angela, cared for indomitably. But even she was no match for the grinding poverty that Malachy's drinking brought upon the family, and for the cold and damp of Limerick. They became so poor that three of the children � twin brothers and a baby girl � died of disease and malnutrition. "It was, of course, a miserable childhood," McCourt famously wrote in Angela's Ashes, in a passage that's worth quoting in full. "The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests, bullying schoolmasters; the English and all the terrible things they did to us for 800 long years."
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http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1911633,00.html |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2009 5:04 pm Post subject: |
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he also wrote Teacher Man, in which he at times talks about ESL teaching
a decent read |
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Kimbop
Joined: 31 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 9:47 am Post subject: |
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| He lived an amazing life and will be missed dearly. The tragedy and adversity he overcame is testament to the value of hard work and being a responsible role model. Did he blame catholicism? Doing so would certainly have been politically correct. Did he blame a lack of government funding? Did he blame his father's human neglect? Above all, he relegated blame to the sidelines, and concentrated specifically on making the world a better place. He succeeded triumphantly. |
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