Frank McCourt

FRANK MCCOURT

Birthplace: Brooklyn, NY (McCourt's family moved back to Limerick, Ireland when he was four)
Current Residence: New York City
Education: B.A. in English, New York University. McCourt dropped out of school at 14, and later attended college on the U.S. G.I. bill.
Profession: Delivered telegrams in Ireland as a young man until he raised enough money to head for New York City, where his mother and brothers later joined him; Worked on loading docks in New York City; Served in U.S. Army during the Korean War; High school English teacher at New York City's Stuyvesant High School (now retired); McCourt and his brother, actor Malachy McCourt, had a cabaret show called "A Couple of Blaguards," which opened in New York in 1984 and toured to Chicago, San Francisco and Ireland; Writer-in-residence, University of Limerick, 1997.
Influences, Interests and Interesting Tidbits: "I tended to dismiss my own life when I looked at people like Hemingway and all. I was comparing myself with various Pulitzer Prize winners. And, of course, I suppose I'm a bit of a victim of the Church in that I look at life as a matter of hierarchies, where one life is greater than another. I looked at Pete Hamill's columns, and I mean I envied them. I mean, I was only a teacher."
- Frank McCourt, New York Times Magazine

When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: 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 everwhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version...
-Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes

I started out [as a teacher] with the standard English teacher stuff. You know: Write what you know. Write about your family, and all that. And all these Chinese kids and Korean kids—I mean, their families went through hell to get here. I said to them: 'Jesus Christ! You're trembling with history!' So they went home with tape recorders and started asking questions, and of course all the grandparents are suddenly suspicious. 'What's goin' on here?' I mean, Asia is not known as an outpost of confession. So we'd read their stuff on Fridays and sometimes we'd go into Mondays. And I'd say: If you write, I'll write. So I did. Little remembrances. And they said: 'Oh, Mr McCourt. You should write a book. You had such an interesting childhood.' Which they only thought because they all had these middle-class existences with the CDs and the video players. But eventually I did.
-Frank McCourt, New York Times Magazine

In reality our life was worse than Frank wrote. Insane outbreaks of laughter saved us.
-Malachy McCourt, People