Frank McCourt Interview (page: 6 / 6) Pulitzer Prize for Biography	Print Interview

In this story of triumph over poverty and hardship, there is still humor and compassion. What is the importance of humor and compassion in your story?

Frank McCourt: I think if you talk to anybody who has come out of adverse circumstances they'll tell you that humor keeps you going. That's the way it was in the lanes and the slums of Limerick. As poor as people were, they sang, they told their stories, and they laughed. They laughed over the neighbors. Limerick, Ireland, has been called an open air lunatic asylum. People wander the streets of Limerick who are, you know, a bit daft. In America they'd be locked up in a minute.

And then we would imitate the teachers. We would go home from mass on Sundays, and if there was a particularly powerful sermon by a Redemptorist preacher, you'd always find me up on a chair giving a sermon and my mother would say, "Would you get down, you old eedjit!" But sometimes she would sit there looking and laughing.

We'd come home from school imitating the school masters. We'd imitate policemen, bureaucrats giving out the welfare down at the dispensary. We imitated and made fun of everybody and even ourselves. We'd tease each other. I remember laughing in a way in Ireland that I've never laughed since.

We'd go up the road, we urchins, and swim in the Shannon. We'd tell each other stories or carry on and literally fall on the ground laughing. There was this excitement and the sense of joy in life, with our low expectations. We were satisfied with a slice of bread and jam. That's it. We didn't know it, but humor was one of the things that was keeping us going.

I've heard that even in the concentration camps they would put on little playlets in these huts, mimicking the guards and so on. If you don't have it, if you don't have that particular chemical, you're dead.

How hard was it to get your voice heard, to be published?

Frank McCourt: I had no problem. When I was writing the first 150 pages I didn't know what I was going to do with it but I had to write it anyway. I had to get it out of my system. Then I met a friend at a lunch, Mary Breasted, who used to be a reporter for the New York Times, and she's a novelist. She asked me what I was writing and I told her I was writing this memoir. She said, "Let me see it." I said, "No, no, no. You wouldn't -- it's too -- it's just misery." She demanded it and she liked it, and she showed it to her agent, Molly Friedrich.

She said to Molly, "You have to read this." Molly said, "What is it about?" "Miserable childhood in Ireland." "No, no, no, we have enough of that." "Read it," says Mary. Molly read it. Then Molly called Nan Graham at Scribner. "What is about?" "A miserable childhood." "No, no, no." "Read it," says Molly." So Nan read it. And then the next thing, they bought it. There were only 150 pages. That was in July 1995.

Nan said to me, "When will it be finished?" And I said "November 30th." And she said, "November 30th, why?" I said, "It's Jonathan Swift's birthday." This was a bit arrogant of me: from July to November I was going to write another 250 pages or so! But I did. I finished it by November 30th and I wrote the last word, which is "'Tis."

My wife Ellen was at work. I said, "I'd like you to come home directly. I want you to be here when I write the last word." So she came in. We sat down at the coffee table. I wrote the last word and we broke open a bottle of champagne. She was there to see the last word.

The next day I took copies to my agent, Molly, and my editor, Nan. And I had promised myself if I ever delivered a book like that I'd go to the nearest Irish pub and have two pints of Guinness. When I went to Molly's office, she had champagne so we had champagne. When I went to Nan's office, she had champagne so I had champagne. Then I went to the Fiddler's Green on 46th Street, I think, and had two pints of Guinness. When I got home I could hardly find the lock for the key.

In your wildest dreams could you have imagined what happened next?

Frank McCourt: No. It is beyond the capacity of any screenwriter or novelist to imagine what has happened to me in my 60s. So I'm the beacon of hope for the whole Social Security set.

I used to go to a bar called the Lion's Head down in Greenwich Village and people like Pete Hamill and Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin would come in there. They were publishing books and writing newspaper columns and I was only a teacher.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. There was a hall -- there were framed book jackets of all the people in there who had written, and the place was swarming with writers. And I had one dream: to have my book jacket framed on that wall. And then the Lion's Head is closed now. It closed in October of '96. A couple of months before that. A month before that maybe. Mike Riordan, the owner, he called me and he said, "Come down for a drink." I said, "Mike, I'm--" "Come down for a drink," he said. So I went down and I sat at -- it's in the afternoon. He said, "What will you have? Is there anything you'd like?" I said, "What's -- why did I suddenly become this -- " I thought they were generous. "Anything you like." I said, "Well, I'll have a Bushmill's, a Black Bushmill's." So I had one and he said, "Cheers." Then he said, "Turn around." And I turned around and there was my framed book jacket. That was it. That was -- for me, that was the Nobel Prize. To be on the wall of the Lion's Head just before it closed.

As soon as I do anything, the publication or the pub closes down. If I send a short story to a magazine, they publish it and then they go out of business. But not in this case, not in the case of Angela's Ashes.

What do you know now about achievement now that you didn't know when you were younger?

Frank McCourt: My dream has been fulfilled: to have come to this country, to have taught.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The day I retired from teaching, again, was one of the most satisfying days of my life and it was sad, but when I -- the day I retired, I went home and I was by myself and I was having a glass of wine. I was thinking about the lunch the teachers gave me that day. The retirement lunch. And I was able to look back on that life, that 30 years in the classroom, and say -- I was able to congratulate myself. I'm glad I did that. That was good. I felt useful, that I don't think I would have felt if I had gone into business or something like that. So that was -- that was that deep satisfaction that I had, that I had followed some kind of a deity -- what would you call it?-- Discipline. And I was dealing with kids, and I hope that I had been of some use, of some help. You never know. But they've told me. I meet the kids, former students, and they tell me that I was of help.

[ Key to Success ] The American Dream

So that and publishing the book. What more can a man ask for?

Is that what the American Dream means to you?

Frank McCourt: This is it. For me it's beyond the American Dream.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I think if there's another place that's even better than America, maybe heaven or something, I've gone beyond it.

So that I could be in a state of paralysis -- ecstatic paralysis. But now I know that I have to write another book. Now I know I'm not finished with the schools, that I'm not finished with kids, that I'm not finished with teachers. That goes on and that's -- if I have any mission left, it's going around talking about the kids and teachers and schools in general.

If you had to, could you say what it took to transcend your circumstances? To get from where you were to where you are today?

Frank McCourt: First of all, I had to overcome the anger, because the anger was paralyzing. I think a lot of the kids knew that. They helped dissipate the anger. They gave me a break. I was kind of an exotic with this accent, from Ireland. Once I dropped the mask, then they were cooperative and I stopped being a phony. That helped me transcend the anger, and the shame and everything else so that I became a teacher in the classroom instead of somebody preaching at the kids. That was the transcendent experience, so that I was able to find myself.

In that sense I was very lucky. You know how, in the corporate world, everybody is putting on an act all the time? If I had gone into anything else, I would have been dead in five years. I would have had ulcers. I would have been out the window. But I was with kids, and they demand honesty. They know when you're telling them lies and you can't sustain the lie with them, or the hypocrisy. The teacher was shaped by the kids. Maybe I taught them something in return, but they shaped me.

Is there anything you haven't had a chance to say that you think kids ought to hear?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Frank McCourt: Everybody says follow your dream, or Joseph Campbell would say, "Follow your bliss." You have to. If it's deep enough, and authentic and profound and genuine, that's where you have to go. If you want to put on the collar of a clergyman, go and put it on. If you want to be a barefooted monk in the Himalayas, that's what you have to do. If you want to be a housewife, that's what you have to do. Because nature -- I know, I found out eventually why I was put on this earth. I was put on this earth to write. And as Thomas Carlyle said, "Happy is the man who has found his work." So I'm happy, and I hope everybody else finds that, too.

Thank you. That was terrific.

Frank McCourt: Thank you.

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