Great writer’s world of dreams and desperation

YOU very kindly printed my Frank McCourt tribute letter (July 24).

However you omitted to include the quotation marks that would have indicated the text did not relate to me and my situation, but was a quote from one of his interviews.

For that reason, your headline ‘Frank McCourt’s world as I experienced it’ was incorrect.

I had included the quotation to indicate my admiration for this brilliant and creative writer, particularly for the way in which he turned his life around and the success he made of it.

The following were Frank’s words, not mine:

“Even though we were poor at the lowest economic level — even below the lowest economic level — we were always excited because we were rich in the sense that we had a lot to look up to, to look forward to, a lot to aspire to, a lot to dream about. But in purely economic terms, things were desperate. It was Calcutta with rain. At least they’re warm in Calcutta.

“Things were really desperate because of certain things — like my father being an alcoholic, my mother having too many babies in too short a time, no work available in Ireland, and even when my father did get a job he drank the wages.

“Then there was the harsh kind of schooling we had with schoolmasters who ruled with a stick and the overwhelming presence of the Catholic Church which imbued us with fear all the time.

“So it was fear, dampness, poverty, alcoholism — fear of the church, fear of the schoolmaster, fear in general.”

Paul Barry

Cardup Siding Road

Cardup

Western Australia 6122