Frank McCourt

It seems I only mention famous writers on this blog when they die, which is sad and unfortunate, really, because Frank McCourt was a writer who probably deserved to be mentioned more.

The recent streak of celebrity deaths has taught me a lot about what we value in America in terms of celebrity. Michael Jackson, the "King of Pop" got the entire first section of the Chicago Tribune (about six pages of newsprint) dedicated to coverage of fallout from his death and wall-to-wall coverage for the next twentyfour hours on every major news network. However, Walter Cronkite, the man who brought us the news for I don't know how many years, got a very nice write up on the front page of the Trib and a mention on the nightly news. I realize, of course, that Cronkite's death was more eminent than Jackson's, but why should an entertainer get more coverage than a broadcaster?

I know that McCourt may not even make the nightly news, even though he won a Pulitzer and, more amazing to me, he taught in public schools for a great deal of his life and then went back to write his three amazing auto-biographical works on his life as an Irish American. He wrote at the beginning of Teacher Man, my favorite of the three books, that you go into teaching hoping that some day you'll write your memoirs and you'll win prizes and someone will decide to make your life into a movie and you'll be famous for teaching, and that inevitably that doesn't happen. Interestingly, his first novel, Angela's Ashes, was made into a movie with Robert Carlyle and Emily Watson and it was nominated for an Oscar. Still Mr. McCourt went on injecting his realism.

He was very realistic about the whole process of teaching, but even amidst the sandwich throwing incidents and the kids who just wouldn't behave in class and explaining the structure of a sentence through the anatomy of a pen and the many, many times he nearly got fired for doing something or another, he always showed a certain humor and humanity in the classroom. That's why I loved his books. He was a great educator and a great story-teller, and I hope someday I can be the same.

Rest in peace, Mr. McCourt. My hat's off to you, sir.