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Frank McCourt Captivates Villanovans
By Irene Burgo

Pulitzer-prize winning author Frank McCourt would not wish to relive his childhood growing up in dire poverty in a Limerick slum. Instead, he revisited his past by writing about his experiences "in dozens of notebooks." While he was teaching high school students in New York City, he retold the stories of his youth to his students hundreds of times. It was his dream one day to write about the harsh reality of his "miserable childhood." Eventually, when his book, Angela's Ashes, was ready to be published, the publishers told him it would earn him a little bit of money but that he most likely would have to go back to teaching. Little did he know that even poverty, when put in a literary perspective, has a dollar value.

Penning his memoirs proved to be a million-dollar experience, so to speak, when you consider that the sales of, Angela's Ashes (for which McCourt won a Pulitzer Prize), the movie of the same name, and the sequel book, 'Tis,' all skyrocketed the former Limerick lad to fame and fortune. But true to his humble origins, McCourt says he never expected the reaction to his book. Worldwide, it initially sold five million copies. He believes the figure now is closer to 10 million. Poverty, a bestseller?

"It was my dream to write about my childhood, but I didn't think anybody would be interested," said McCourt in an exclusive interview for "Villanova" Magazine. "I wanted to write it for myself." When he first arrived in the United States, he said: "My exptectations were not very high. I wanted to meet a nice woman, get married have two children and live a decent life. On Saturday night, maybe we'd go to the movies."

The Brooklyn-born, Limerick-raised McCourt has realized his dream and then some. His fondest, most satisfying memories of adult life, however, are those he gathered while teaching high school students for 30 years. It was those classroom experiences that he chose to discuss during his visit to Villanova on Sept. 21, where McCourt addressed a packed audience in the Pavilion. He is also writing a new book, a novel, about his life as a teacher.

In our interview, McCourt spoke about writing Angela's Ashes. The memoir had been "simmering for years" in his head while he taught school. "Because my students would ask me about my life, as soon as I opened my mouth and doled out a few anecdotes," said McCourt, "I was asked for more, to elaborate. They said I should write a book. I had intended to write a novel sometime about growing up in Limerick, and I was going to elaborate and make it bigger and dynastic. But I was not ready for writing. I was keeping notebooks. I have a duffle bag filled with notebooks," he explained.

"When I look back on the writing of that book, I wonder where it came from," recalled McCourt. "Because even though I had all those notebooks, I didn't consult them. I just wrote from my head."

People and other authors, in fact, have questioned his ability to remember the details of his boyhood. McCourt responds that individuals can remember more than they think possible if they indulge in quiet time for recollection, and try, without distractions, to cultivate and stimulate the memory process. Writing in longhand, spending much time alone, he continually tapped his memory as he composed his memoir. "'When people say 'how do you remember all that?' I reply, 'Sit a room quietly for a while sometime.' When you sit there day after day writing, things come back to you. I think that if you were to stay there long enough, your whole life would come back to you." The author cites a favorite nursery rhyme, 'Little Bo Peep,' to emphasize his point: "You know, when you can't remember a word, this summarizes it. Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep and doesn't know where to find them. Leave them alone and they will come home, wagging their tales behind them. When you can't find the words, that sums it all up. Just leave them alone. Let them come home."'

Even though he attended school in Ireland only until he was 13 years old, McCourt trained his memory well because he was required to memorize all of his lessons. "We didn't have any textbooks. The instructor wrote on the blackboard and we'd have to copy it down in our notebooks, and we memorized everything-hymns in English, Irish and Latin, and poetry."

When McCourt describes in person the "miserable Irish childhood," which he so vividly recounts in Angela's Ashes, it is obvious that the reality was probably reinforced at school as well. Says McCourt: "The poems we memorized were all poems about Ireland's great suffering. We were experts in suffering."

The author will reexamine his life in America as he writes his novel about teaching. "Teaching was the main occupation of my life," he reflects. "If I know anything I learned it in the classroom. If I know anything about literature or writing or the human heart, I learned it by interacting with kids-through talks and in discussions about poetry and virtually everything. That's the beauty of teaching English. It was a rich experience in that sense."