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"I certainly couldn't have written 'Angela's Ashes' when my mother was alive, because she would have been ashamed," McCourt told the Hartford Courant. "Her generation and my generation, to a certain extent, were never proud of having grown up in poverty and adversity. We always wanted to give people the idea that we grew up in kind of middle-class, or lower-middle-class, circumstances."
After arriving in the U.S. in 1949, McCourt got a job as a houseman at the Biltmore Hotel in New York.
Drafted into the Army during the Korean War, he spent two years in Germany. Although he didn't have a high school education, he later said, he was "fairly well read" and managed to "talk" his way into New York University.
After graduating in 1957, he got a job teaching English at a vocational and technical high school on Staten Island. A decade later, he received a master's degree from Brooklyn College.
As a teacher, McCourt would regale his students with his horrifying and often hilarious tales of his childhood in Ireland. In the late '60s, he tried to write a book about his early years but considered his effort "appalling" and set it aside.
"I was going through my James Joyce period, studied and affected," he told the New York Times in 1997. "I was still struggling to find my voice.
"All along, I wanted to do this book badly. I would have to do it, or I would have died howling."
It wasn't until 1994, after observing his young granddaughter, Chiara, developing her vocabulary that McCourt discovered a way to best tell his story: through his eyes as a child.
Storytelling came naturally to McCourt, whose skills were nurtured over pints of Guinness at places such as the Lion's Head tavern in Greenwich Village, which was a hangout for newspapermen and authors such as Pete Hamill and Norman Mailer.
"We were all storytellers growing up," McCourt said of his family in a 2000 interview with the Toronto Sun. "That's all we had. There was no TV or radio. We'd sit around the fire and make up stories. My dad was a great storyteller. We'd mention a neighbor, and he'd make up a story.
"But I also had to be a great storyteller to survive teaching. I spent 30 years in the classroom. When you stand before 170 teenagers each day, you have to get and keep their attention. Their attention span is about seven minutes, which is the time between commercials. So you have to stay on your toes."
In the mid-1980s, McCourt and his actor brother Malachy wrote and began performing in "A Couple of Blaguards," a two-character comedy musical revue about their early years.
McCourt also wrote " 'Tis: A Memoir," a 1999 sequel to "Angela's Ashes," covering his life in the U.S.; and "Teacher Man," a 2005 memoir about his years as a schoolteacher.
Married and divorced twice, he married his third wife, publicist Ellen Frey, in 1994.
Besides his wife and his brother Malachy, McCourt's survivors include a daughter, Maggie, from a previous marriage.
dennis.mclellan@latimes.com
After arriving in the U.S. in 1949, McCourt got a job as a houseman at the Biltmore Hotel in New York.
Drafted into the Army during the Korean War, he spent two years in Germany. Although he didn't have a high school education, he later said, he was "fairly well read" and managed to "talk" his way into New York University.
After graduating in 1957, he got a job teaching English at a vocational and technical high school on Staten Island. A decade later, he received a master's degree from Brooklyn College.
As a teacher, McCourt would regale his students with his horrifying and often hilarious tales of his childhood in Ireland. In the late '60s, he tried to write a book about his early years but considered his effort "appalling" and set it aside.
"I was going through my James Joyce period, studied and affected," he told the New York Times in 1997. "I was still struggling to find my voice.
"All along, I wanted to do this book badly. I would have to do it, or I would have died howling."
It wasn't until 1994, after observing his young granddaughter, Chiara, developing her vocabulary that McCourt discovered a way to best tell his story: through his eyes as a child.
Storytelling came naturally to McCourt, whose skills were nurtured over pints of Guinness at places such as the Lion's Head tavern in Greenwich Village, which was a hangout for newspapermen and authors such as Pete Hamill and Norman Mailer.
"We were all storytellers growing up," McCourt said of his family in a 2000 interview with the Toronto Sun. "That's all we had. There was no TV or radio. We'd sit around the fire and make up stories. My dad was a great storyteller. We'd mention a neighbor, and he'd make up a story.
"But I also had to be a great storyteller to survive teaching. I spent 30 years in the classroom. When you stand before 170 teenagers each day, you have to get and keep their attention. Their attention span is about seven minutes, which is the time between commercials. So you have to stay on your toes."
In the mid-1980s, McCourt and his actor brother Malachy wrote and began performing in "A Couple of Blaguards," a two-character comedy musical revue about their early years.
McCourt also wrote " 'Tis: A Memoir," a 1999 sequel to "Angela's Ashes," covering his life in the U.S.; and "Teacher Man," a 2005 memoir about his years as a schoolteacher.
Married and divorced twice, he married his third wife, publicist Ellen Frey, in 1994.
Besides his wife and his brother Malachy, McCourt's survivors include a daughter, Maggie, from a previous marriage.
dennis.mclellan@latimes.com
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A sad day. I enjoyed Tis' more than a Angela's Ashes. You will be missed Mr. McCourt
De1977 (07/19/2009, 6:18 PM )