Goodbye Frank McCourt, and Thank You
Monday, July 20, 2009 at 12:25AM 
I posted a quick piece on the passing of author Frank McCourt at Murmur.com.
an excerpt:
I first read Angela's Ashes, McCourt's first book, published at age 66, when I was getting out of college. My grandmother gave it to me, suggesting that it was something I needed to read, and boy was she right. I've always been fascinated with Ireland, the land of my particular heritage, and the inherent skill with language and humor its most talented writers possessed. I was instantly drawn into McCourt's tale of growing up poor in Limerick, Ireland in extreme poverty, and a drunken absentee father. I could certainly relate to the latter part.
The thing is, every time I see references to Angela's Ashes, I hear about "grim" "sullen" tales of a terrible life. But that's not the book I remember reading. Angela's Ashes is a remarkably funny book in my mind, as are McCourt's other books, 'Tis and Teacher Man. In Angela, McCourt tells most of the story through his own eyes as a child. In that sense, the child has no context for what is horrible around him, and very often, the writing struck me as totally honest, but very funny. Through that sense of humor, we were able to understand what the life was really like for a kid living through what he lived through. The 1999 film adaptation by director, Alan Parker, lacked all of that humor, because it wasn't told straight from the voice of the child who lived through it. But the amazing sparse wording of the book, written in the voice McCourt spoke brought you right there.
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