Angela's Ashes and its (critics') discontents: a grudge match?

[fasstrack]

Did you ever have this wet blanket thrown your way: you're into something great, only to nearly be thrown off-course by encountering a chorus of malcontents along the way? Bullshit, they inveigh. This guy's a liar, a traitor, an opportunist. I finally got to Frank McCourt's book-and found it masterful writing, with a black, ironic humor that was never bitter, but about surviving. Certainly it resonated with many more. Now, almost done, I read many in Limerick hate not the book, but McCourt himself. He's pummeled in local editorials as being hateful toward the town, denying its spirit and anything else good, of exaggerating his poverty and factual errors describing people and events 70-80 years ago. Most bristling is the late Limerickian Richard Harris, who gets into a pub fight w/McCourt (he says McCourt hit him and ran!), calls Frank and brother Malachy 'users', and claims Angela herself disavowed the book and walked out of a play about their youth the boys performed back home, calling it a 'pack of...

Edited August 28, 2012 by fasstrack

[Pete C]

What year is this?

[fasstrack]

Pt. 2...lies. Harris claims Angela told her she was unwanted and her sons were waiting for her to die. It's amazing how Angela is used as a wedge by both sides. The cruelest accusation: Frank and Malachy, against Catholic law, had their mother cremated rather than pay for a funeral! Interestingly, no one ever attacks the book itself. It's too well-loved, and IMO deservedly. Questions that come to mind besides the obvious ones of jealousy: how much license can a writer take before a work becomes fiction or 'biographical novel' (as I was astonished to find Manchild in the Promised Land was after knowing it since age 14-it was so REAL). I'll end w/2 thoughts: the people of Harlem lauded, not hated Claude Brown for an equally unflattering portrayal. And to quote Bob Dylan on the subject of songs: 'Lies, nothing but lies.' Thoughts?

[fasstrack]

What year is this?

The year I read it. Now. The controversy goes back to the late 90s, but the themes remain germane, to me anyway. Edited August 28, 2012 by fasstrack

[Pete C]

how much license can a writer take before a work becomes fiction or 'biographical novel'

Any deliberate license with the facts is bad faith in a work of nonfiction, plain and simple. Perhaps a disclaimer, like Obama's, of composite girlfriends etc. can mitigate this, but otherwise I'd say that memoirists need to either come clean or write an autobiographical novel. Henry Miller's Tropic books were marketed as novels, and rightly so.

[fasstrack]

Agreed. But you're not answering the question posed specifically about Frank McCourt, and why he and his book aroused such bile back home even as it was lauded and loved everywhere else. (BTW, to throw yet MORE wood on the fire, the Pulitzer awarded the book was for biography-not a whisper about fiction).

[Pete C]

Having not read the book nor followed the controversy closely I have no answer to any question but the one I answered.

[Matthew]

I happen know someone who is from Limerick, about the same age as McCourt (Ugh! bad Dodger flashback!), and he said, when the book came out, that it rang true to the times. He also said that what people objected to was airing out stuff like what's in the book in public and making $$$$$$ off of it, because it was felt to be catering to the American market, and to a certain type of Irish stereotype.

As to the other question, I would say once a writer starts to make up events, even if it's a composite of true experiences, then you've crossed the line to "autobiographical novel," based on your experiences, but retold in a creative manner, which has a long history in literature.

[fasstrack]

Ok.

[fasstrack]

The OK was for Pete. I wasn't trying to badger you. I assumed you'd read it. My bad. Your points are good ones-and I appreciate your candor in where you're coming from. I'd love reading your thoughts if you do read it. I'll post a link to the then-controversy at a real computer later.

[Tim McG]

The only book I have read by Frank McCourt was Teacher Man. Therein, is enough anti-Catholic sentiment to test even the Pope's tolerance. Why isn't this book a source of derision?

Now, how a book about his life is castigated with regard to this and alleged Irish stereotypes is baffling. If it is his life, how can anyone dispute it?

[JETman]

He was one of my high school English teachers back in the 70s, well before his success as a writer. At the time, his brother Malachy was a well-known soap opera actor and bar owner in NYC. Who knew that Frank would go on to bigger and better things?

[Larry Kart]

The only book I have read by Frank McCourt was Teacher Man. Therein, is enough anti-Catholic sentiment to test even the Pope's tolerance. Why isn't this book a source of derision?

Now, how a book about his life is castigated with regard to this and alleged Irish stereotypes is baffling. If it is his life, how can anyone dispute it?

Well, if in the view of those who have some knowledge of the man and his background, he significantly shaped the telling of the story of his life to fit those prevailing, saleable stereotypes. Wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened.

[fasstrack]

I knew of Malachy way before Frank got so 'big'. He had a talk radio show on WBAI in NY in the '80s. And a damn entertaining show it was. Or make that 't'was'. Don't shoot-it was a joke. I swear... I didn't want to latch onto such a pat explaination-but jealously is always at least a little factor in drive-by snipes at the (especially newly) famous. But such VENOM. McCourt really must've rubbed Limerick the wrong way, then stuck salt from Mam's fried bread in the wounds.

[fasstrack]

It's interesting how this became about the McCourts, manipulative writing and variations of biography and fiction-rather than Angela's Ashes. I know I sort of loaded that gun in the OP. Does anyone else agree that the book itself is superb? McCourt's prose is beauty and simplicity. It flows. The only U.S. writer I find his equal as a memoirist is Pete Hammil-esp. his A Drinking Life. It dealt with some of the same themes in an equally original voice.

[Larry Kart]

How can it not, at least in part, be about Frank McCourt if "Angela's Ashes," however beautiful its prose may be, is also more or less a fantasy and one that implicitly or explicitly is unfair to others? The standard for memoirists is not identical to that for writers of fiction.

[A Lark Ascending]

I took my mother to see the film and she said it was unrecognisable compared with her own life growing up at the same time in Athlone (the next big town to the north-east). Admittedly she came from a stable, skilled craftsman family so there might have been a class difference.

I agree that different standards apply between fiction and a 'real life' recollection. Wonder where that puts 'Beneath the Underdog'? I suspect it will be defended as using exaggeration, braggadocio and fantasy to illustrate deeper truths.

[Pete C]

Wonder where that puts 'Beneath the Underdog'?

It's a novel, and not a good one, but also a document of great interest to jazz fans.

[A Lark Ascending]

Wonder where that puts 'Beneath the Underdog'?

It's a novel, and not a good one, but also a document of great interest to jazz fans.

Really? It's 35 years since I read it - I was always under the impression is was sold as an autobiography.

Agree, it's a fascinating book; but even when I read it as someone new to jazz I was hurling bags of salt between the pages.

[fasstrack]

Just an observation, Larry-and one I broached myself in the OP. Nothing-no one- exists in a vacuum. It's a bit like still loving a great musician's work despite finding he's a rotten SOB. I'm glad I read and processed most of Angela's Ashes before I knew about these deep waters. It takes a special discipline to shut out the noise and opinions on an artwork or anything else and just let it in and decide on one's own.

[Pete C]

I was always under the impression is was sold as an autobiography.

It was. I was not responding to how it was marketed, but to what it is.

I was hurling bags of salt between the pages.

I'm not understanding the metaphor.

[JohnS]

An Irish lady I worked with said there was more than a smidgen of truth in the book.

[Tim McG]

The only book I have read by Frank McCourt was Teacher Man. Therein, is enough anti-Catholic sentiment to test even the Pope's tolerance. Why isn't this book a source of derision?

Now, how a book about his life is castigated with regard to this and alleged Irish stereotypes is baffling. If it is his life, how can anyone dispute it?

Well, if in the view of those who have some knowledge of the man and his background, he significantly shaped the telling of the story of his life to fit those prevailing, saleable stereotypes. Wouldn't be the first time something like that has happened.

Good point and I agree.

I just wonder why any embelishment [something authors do all the time] should be a source of so much anger. If his father was a drunk, then he was. Nobody thinks of Irish stereotypes when referring to James Joyce who was also a drunk. If the Mother disavowes the book [or so we are told] could it be because of not wanting that embarassment out in public? A legit concern, but at what point do we allow for adult children to write about such dificult times of their own childhood? Embelishments notwithstanding.

He was one of my high school English teachers back in the 70s, well before his success as a writer. At the time, his brother Malachy was a well-known soap opera actor and bar owner in NYC. Who knew that Frank would go on to bigger and better things?

Very cool!

I'll have to relay that to my English students

[A Lark Ascending]

It was. I was not responding to how it was marketed, but to what it is.

The same could be argued for Angela's Ashes. If you are sympathetic to it.

I'm not understanding the metaphor.

Taking with a pinch of salt; magnified.

Edited August 28, 2012 by A Lark Ascending

[fasstrack]

He was one of my high school English teachers back in the 70s, well before his success as a writer. At the time, his brother Malachy was a well-known soap opera actor and bar owner in NYC. Who knew that Frank would go on to bigger and better things?

I'd love to know what Mr. McCourt was like as a teacher!