Frank McCourt - Honour him by learning his lessons

WHEN Frank McCourt’s great memoir Angela’s Ashes was published 13 years ago it was immediately recognised as a wonderful, benchmark memoir.

That, however, did not prevent a degree of criticism from an offended minority who felt that his descriptions of Limerick as a dismal, impoverished, rain-sodden and priest-ridden backwater were unjustified.

If we are to be honest, and in these instances that can be no more than an assumption, we have to acknowledge that McCourt’s work describes exactly the lot of the poor, the near-destitute and the alcohol-plagued in the Ireland of more than half a century ago. It, like more or less anywhere else, could be a horrible place if you drew one of life’s short straws.

McCourt’s great, defining quality is the honesty he brought to his writing. He didn’t pretend that things were better than they were, he did not sing the company song. His directness could be crushing, it was certainly challenging. His great grace was that he leavened the misery with the easy humour of a natural optimist.

“Limerick for us was Calcutta with rain,” he recalled. “We were the lowest of the low, economically and socially, the only way was up but so many never had that chance. It was a life of fear, rain, penury and alcoholism. Poverty robs you of many things, but the worst is self-esteem.”

That kind of memoir leaves little enough wriggle room for the squeamish or well-intentioned but blinkered. Angela’s Ashes was a kind of generalist and early Ryan Report. It told us things about ourselves that we might prefer were left unsaid and unacknowledged. Even today the legacy of those appalling social circumstances can be seen in all of our cities and prisons.

Angela’s Ashes became a million seller, won the Pulitzer and was made into a movie. It has been published in 25 languages and 30 countries. Not bad for a retired, 65-year-old, New York-based, English teacher plucked from immigrant stock.

The great redemption and victory in McCourt’s work is himself. After a childhood where survival was not guaranteed, no more than a possibility at best, he came to realise so many improbable dreams.

He was the child of immigrants who became wealthy. He was the inspirational teacher who stepped into a magical second life. Through his struggle to get an education, and the evangelism with which he later shared that education, he drew a map for us all. He showed us a meritocracy can be a wonderful place to live and work. But most of all he showed us the absolute liberating, life-defining power of education. Without it he would have been just another bitter and bewildered Paddy washed up in New York. With it, through it, he became one of the great writers of his generation.

By his life, and through his work, Frank McCourt teaches us many powerful lessons about overcoming life’s challenges and realising dreams. The greatest honour we could pay him would be to learn them.