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Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes and the rest

It didn’t happen like that. It wasn’t like that for McCourt, neither was it like that for anyone else in Limerick.

That was, and still is, the outspoken reaction to Angela’s Ashes from many people in Limerick, upset about the portrayal of poverty, hardship and the indifference encountered and remembered by Frank McCourt from his younger days in growing up in Limerick City’s lanes. Indeed, some local people have even gone on the campaign trail to rubbish McCourt’s recollections and his book.

Speaking on Sunday, 21 September 2003 on Irish television, where he was a guest choosing his favourite hymns for a Sunday religious broadcast, Mr McCourt said he could understand the hostility to what he wrote.

“It’s just the pride of Limerick,” the best selling author told the programme presenter.

Indeed it is difficult to imagine how Mr McCourt, while working as a teacher in New York and writing his first novel Angela’s Ashes, would have sat and deliberately falsified his recollections of his youth. There was no indication at the time that his novel would ever become of interest, would ever sell, let alone become a best seller.

Given the obscurity of the writer at the time, who could only then be said to be an aspiring author, the falsification of past memories becomes ludicrous. Quite simply, by falsifying such memories, McCourt had nothing to gain and everything to lose.

It cannot be denied that some people will always prefer to turn away from certain truths that they might prefer not to face, confront, or even accept.

Mr McCourt saw what he saw, and remembered what he remembered as he remembered it. It is an act of ignorance for other’s to dismiss his life experiences simply because they choose not to like what he says. There is a well coined local phrase in Limerick for such people. They are called ‘begrudgers’.

Mr McCourt’s memories go back across the decades to the 1930’s and the 1940’s. The recollections of the author of this article, a newsman with 40 year’s experience in journalism from a freelance to a staffer and also the webmaster of a now defunct Angela's Ashes related site, go back through 15 years of living in Limerick City centre.

As a journalist, I am trained to observe and note. Whether anyone chooses to accept or reject what I see and note matters little to me. I simply do my job. If others choose to reject my observations and comments, it is only themselves who subsequently fail to benefit from them. As is the same for those speaking of McCourt’s own observations

Keith Harris
September 22, 2003

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Sample tracks are unfortunately no longer currenly available at this location but work is underway to restore the samples.

Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes and the rest