Frank McCourt, Biography Of A Stubborn Irishman

Frank McCourt was a writer of Irish origin, although born in New York, who became known throughout the world thanks to his novel The Ashes of Angela . It spent more than 70 weeks at the top of the list of the most read, according to the literary supplement of the New York Times , and in just three years it was taken to the cinema and translated into more than 20 languages.

The most striking thing is that Frank McCourt was 66 years old when he decided to write and publish it. Most of his life he had been a school teacher in New York high schools. He worked mainly with disadvantaged young people and considered himself more as a teacher than a writer.

Frank McCourt belatedly wrote and only four works. After publishing Angela’s Ashes , in 1996, he published Lo es , in 1999. In this novel, he recounted his experience as an immigrant in the United States. Later, he published his book The Professor , in which he narrates his experience as a teacher. Finally, he wrote a Christmas story called Angela and the baby Jesus . All his works were enormously successful.

Today, we delve a little deeper into the life and work of this writer who, although not very prolific in terms of quantity, enjoyed overwhelming recognition.

Frank McCourt’s childhood

It can be said that Frank McCourt had a terrifying childhood. That was precisely the substrate that he used to write his first great work. He was born on August 19, 1930 in New York and was the result of a relationship that was considered sinful by his family environment. His mother, Angela, became pregnant before getting married.

The father, Malachy McCourt, was an alcoholic man who, however, had an extraordinary gift for storytelling. Angela was a depressed woman obsessed with religion. The family was formed at the same time as the Great Depression in the United States.

In less than six years, Angela had seven children . Three of them died, when Frank McCourt was still very young. All of them died of diseases linked to poverty. Bad times led to the decision to return to their parents’ hometown, Limerik, in Ireland. Although far from improving their situation, this decision would tragically mark their lives.

A dramatic situation

Poverty did not stop, but increased upon arrival in Ireland. Back then, it was the poorest country in Europe. Frank McCourt spent a childhood full of deprivation. Eating an egg was a luxury few could afford. He went from one place to another with his mother asking for the charity of the State and taking advantage of the leftovers they found.

All of this was captured in Angela’s Ashes . McCourt’s great mastery lies in having portrayed these extreme circumstances with a touch of tenderness and humor. Shortly after its publication, the author himself confessed that it had been a challenge to go back and remember those dramatic times.

He never quite got over the pain of those years. It is said that he was a man who always had a halo of sadness in his eyes. One of his friends recounted that Frank McCourt once saw a television commercial that spoke of poor children and immediately began to cry for several minutes without any consolation.

An extraordinary success

Frank McCourt worked from the age of 13 to help his family. He also raised the money to leave, or perhaps flee, Ireland. Thus he arrived in the United States and, shortly after, he enlisted in the army. He managed to finish his studies and became a teacher, an activity he carried out for 30 years. When he retired, he decided to give shape to old writings and, in this way, his famous first novel was born.

Long before the success he had reunited with his brothers, who also traveled to the United States. So did his mother, with whom Frank had a strained relationship until she died. His father tried to join them, but ended up looking for them in the middle of a drunkenness that ended with a police intervention.

Almost a decade after his first great literary success, Frank McCourt developed skin cancer. Even so, he remained active for a long time. However, the disease caused meningitis that caused him to lose hearing, sight and speech. He died in New York at the age of 78, just one month before his 79th birthday; By then he had been married three times and had two children. At the time of his death, he was confined in a nursing home.

McCourt’s story borders on the tragic, but it is an example of overcoming. An example of how to make tragedy something to live with, something to bear to end up shaping it. His work is not very extensive, but it is of a great literary quality and, today, it continues to surprise us.