În 'Tis aflăm despre anii petrecuți în SUA, despre diferitele locuri de muncă (responsabil cu aducerea telegramelor, a scris scrisori pentru cei care nu știau ori nu mai puteau scrie, portar la hotel, soldat și agent de asigurări) pe care le-a avut la început pentru a se putea întreține și pentru a putea studia la Universitatea din New York, despre cum a evoluat familia lui acolo, dar și despre pierderea mamei.

Am scris aici mai multe despre cele trei cărți ale lui:

https://bibliotraveller.blogspot.com/...

Not as strong or comedic as Angela's Ashes.

Sigh. 'Tis.

Much more uplifting than Angela's Ashes (which I also really enjoyed)), and it was fun to read about Frank McCourt's experiences living in New York throughout the 1950's, 60's, and 70's. The book had some really funny moments, and I loved the stories about when he started teaching high school. It helped to have familiarity with the background family dynamics from Angela's Ashes, but I also think it would be totally fine to read 'Tis if you haven't read Angela's Ashes first.

The sequel to Angela's Ashes. A really good read but doesn't quite measure up to the first book, which, literally, blew me away.

I was skeptical about reading this memoir after having a hard time getting into Angela's Ashes in high school, but I really enjoyed this read. Maybe that's because I could relate to McCourt more in this book- as a teacher, as someone trying to find purpose in their early adult life, navigating relationships and friendships and work. I found his take on veteran teachers versus rookie teachers interesting to read... I think there's still a certain amount of truth to the relationship between years in the classroom and cynicism, as well as the relationship between administration and teaching staff. I'd be very interested in reading his book about his experiences as a teacher. I find that I really enjoy McCourt's writing- "write simple". It's conversational and easy to read. He writes like he is recounting observations to a friend, which makes for a very enjoyable read.

A memoir of Frank McCourt. Growing up,finding jobs, going to college and was overwhelmed when a teacher made Frank read his essay “ The Bed” in class. The teacher said”you should be a writer”. Frank was greatly encouraged.
He did become an English teacher. He was promoted to Stuyvesant HighSchool, the best in the city. Later he taught creative writing.

Francis "Frank" McCourt (1930-2009) palasi 19-vuotiaana Irlannista takaisin synnyinkaupunkiinsa New Yorkiin. Amerikan ihmemaassa kertoi hänen omakohtaisesta elämästään vuoden 1949 lokakuusta lähtien. Frank McCourt sai esikoisteoksestaan Seitsemännen portaan enkeli Pulizer-palkinnon vuonna 1997.

Frank McCourt alkoi heti kotiutua New Yorkiin, kun huomasi, että joka kadulta löytyi irlantilaisia kuppiloita. Yhdessä niistä, baarimikko käski hänen painua kirjastoon ja lukea Johnsonia ennemmin kuin juopotella kuppiloissa. Päätyipä hän jopa tansseihin erään samassa talossa asuvan nuorukaisen kanssa. Harmi vaan, että Frank oli hiljainen kaveri, eikä myöskään osannut tanssia.

Asunnot vaihtuivat, työpaikat vaihtuivat ja tyttöystäväkin ilmestyi kuvioihin mukaan. Halu opiskella pysyi mukana mielessä vuosien ajan, ja niinpä eräänä päivänä Frank uskalsi ilmoittautua opiskelemaan avoimeen yliopistoon. Yleensä sinne vaadittiin lukio-opinnot, mutta Frankin kohdalla tehtiin poikkeus. Lopulta hän valmistui opettajaksi, ja niihin opettajavuosiinkin voit syventyä tarkemmin tämän kirjan parissa. Luvassa on runsain mitoin rehevää kerrontaa, sillä Frank McCourtin teksti suorastaan ilotulittelee tarinoidessaan.

Really enjoyable read, he’s a seanachai, Irish for a traveling storyteller of sorts, in the best sense of the word.

Some favorite quotes of mine speak for themselves of the beauty and laughter and story that this book is thick with:

Ch. 33:

• “Sometimes she’s invited to cocktail parties. And I’m confused how people stand nose to nose chatting, & eating little things & bits of stale bread & crackers. No one’s singing or telling a story the way they did in Limerick, till they start looking at their watches & start saying ‘Are you hungry, wanna go eat something?,’ & off they drift. And that’s what they call a ‘party.’ “

• “Of course she says, No, thanks, though you can see she’s flattered and I often wonder if she’d like to go with Mr. Lawyer in the Suit rather than stay with me, a man from a slum who never went to high school and gawks at the world with two eyes like piss holes in the snow. Surely she’d like to marry someone with clear blue eyes and spotless white teeth who would take her to cocktail parties and move to Westchester where they’d join the country club, play golf and drink martinis, and frolic in the night in the grip of the gin.”

• “Paddy and the old man talked to me only to remind me that thousands of men and women died for Ireland who’d hardly be happy with my behavior the way I run around with Episcopalians betraying the cause…From time to time the old man leaned around Paddy to tell me, Stick to your own, stick to your own. I’m in New York, land of the free and home of the brave, but I’m supposed to behave as if I were still in Limerick, Irish at all times. I’m expected to go out only with Irish girls who frighten me with the way they’re always in a state of grace saying no to everything and everyone unless it’s a Paddy Muck who wants to settle on a farm of land in Roscommon and bring up seven children, three cows, five sheep and a pig. I don’t know why I returned to America if I have to listen to the sad stories of Ireland’s sufferings and dance with country girls, Mullingar heifers, beef to the heels…There was a darkness in my head from the whiskey and I was ready to tell Paddy and the old man, I’m weary of Ireland’s sufferings and I can’t live in two countries at the same time.”

Ch. 35
• “He says, Look at what they do in the academic world. You corner a half-acre of human knowledge, Chaucer’s phallic imagery in “The Wife of Bath,” or Swift’s devotion to shit, and you build a fence around it. Decorate the fence with footnotes and bibliographies. Post a sign, Keep Off, Trespassers Will Lose Their Tenure. I’m engaged myself in a noble search for a Mongolian philosopher. I thought of cornering the market on an Irish philosopher but all I could find was Berkeley and they’ve got their claws into him already…I’ll get my Ph.D., write a few articles on my Mongolian in obscure scholarly journals. I’ll deliver learned lectures to drunken Orientalists at MLA conventions and wait for the job offers to pour in from the Ivy League and its cousins.”

Ch. 41

• “Oh, Christ. I could easily whimper like a kicked dog. My belly is cold and there’s nothing in the world but dark clouds with Alberta in the middle all blonde, blue-eyed, lavender-scarved, ready to leave me forever for her new man and it’s worse than having doors shut in my face, worse than dying itself.

Then she kisses my cheek. Good night, she says. She doesn’t say good-bye. Does that mean she’s leaving a door open? Surely if she’s finished with me forever she should be saying good-bye.

It doesn’t matter. She’s gone. Out the door. Up the steps with every man in the bar looking at her. It’s the end of the world. I might as well be dead. I might as well jump into the Hudson River and let it carry my corpse past Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty across the Atlantic and up the River Shannon where at least I’d be among my own people and not rejected by Rhode Island Protestants.

The bartender is about fifty and I’d like to ask him if he’s ever suffered the way I’m suffering now and what did he do about it? Is there a cure? He might even be able to tell me what it means when a woman who’s leaving you forever says good night instead of good-bye.

But this man has a great bald head and massive black eyebrows and I have a feeling he has his own troubles and there’s nothing for it but to get off the bar stool and leave.“

Ch. 42

• “Of course neither one of us is going to talk like this in the middle of our reconciliation especially since I have a nagging feeling she’s right and I might be just a drifter like my father. Even though I’ve been a teacher for a year I still envy people who can sit in coffee shops and pubs and go to parties where there are artists and models and a jazz combo in the corner blowing cool and lowdown.

No use telling her anything of my freedom dreams. She’d say, You’re a teacher. You never dreamed when you got off the boat you’d come this far. Get on with it.”

Ch. 43:

• “When they emerge from the customs shed there’s a piece of broken leather flapping from Mam’s right shoe so that you can see the small toe of a foot that was always swollen. Does it ever end? Is this the family of the broken shoe? We embrace and Alphie smiles with broken blackened teeth.

The family of broken shoes and teeth destroyed. Will this be our coat of arms?”

• “She returns to the table, rests her hands in her lap and tells us, I’d give me two eyes for a decent cup of tea, and Linda tells her she’ll go out today and get a teapot and loose tea, right, Malachy?

He says, Right, because he knows in his heart there’s nothing like tea made in a pot which you rinse with water boiling madly, where there’s a heaping spoon for each cup, where you pour in the madly boiling water, keeping the pot warm with a tea cosy while the tea brews for six minutes exactly.”

Ch. 44:

• “After my classes at Brooklyn College I would sometimes leave the train at Bergen Street to visit my mother. If she knew I was coming she’d make soda bread so warm and delicious it melted in the mouth as fast as the butter she slathered on it. She made tea in a teapot and couldn’t help sniffing at the idea of tea bags. I told her tea bags were just a convenience for people with busy lives and she said no one is so busy they can’t take time to make a decent cup of tea and if you are that busy you don’t deserve a decent cup of tea for what is it all about anyway? Are we put into this world to be busy or to chat over a nice cup of tea?”

The full quote for the rich context:

“After my classes at Brooklyn College I would sometimes leave the train at Bergen Street to visit my mother. If she knew I was coming she’d make soda bread so warm and delicious it melted in the mouth as fast as the butter she slathered on it. She made tea in a teapot and couldn’t help sniffing at the idea of tea bags. I told her tea bags were just a convenience for people with busy lives and she said no one is so busy they can’t take time to make a decent cup of tea and if you are that busy you don’t deserve a decent cup of tea for what is it all about anyway? Are we put into this world to be busy or to chat over a nice cup of tea?”

Ch. 48:

• “I know it wasn’t the dinner wine that had me against the wall in a fit of remorse. It was the thought of my mother being so lonesome she had to sit on a street bench, so lonesome she missed the company of a homeless shopping bag woman. Even in the bad days in Limerick she always had an open hand and an open door and why couldn’t I be like that to her?”

Ch. 53:

• “It was too much for me. I didn’t know how to be a husband, a father, a house owner with two tenants, a certified member of the middle class. I didn’t know how to proceed, how to dress, how to chatter of the stockmarket at parties, how to play squash or golf, how to give a testosteronic handshake and look my man in the eye with a, Pleasure to meet you, sir.”

• “Slum-reared Irish Catholics have nothing in common with nice girls from New England who had little curtains at their bedroom windows, who wore white gloves right up to their elbows and went to proms with nice boys, who studied etiquette with French nuns and were told, Girls, your virtue is like a dropped vase. You may repair the break but the crack will always be there. Slum-reared Irish Catholic might have recalled what their father said, ‘After a full belly, all is poetry.’ “

Ch. 55:
• “When your mother is dead you can’t be sitting around looking mournful, recalling her virtues, receiving the condolences of friends and neighbors. You have to stand before the coffin with your brothers Malachy and Alphie and Malachy’s sons, Malachy, Conor, Cormac, link arms and sing the songs your mother loved and the songs your mother hated because that’s the only way you can be sure she’s dead, and we sang

A mother’s love is a blessing

No matter where you roam,

Keep her while she’s living,

You’ll miss her when she’s gone.

  and

Goodbye, Johnny dear, when you’re far away,

Don’t forget you dear old mother

Far across the sea.

Write a letter now and then

And send her all you can

And don’t forget where’er you roam

That you’re an Irishman.”

Ch. 56:
• “I flew to my father’s funeral in Belfast in the hope I might discover why I was flying to my father’s funeral in Belfast.”

• Re: Belfast: “Someday it would end and they’d all saunter out for the pound of butter or even the saunter for its own sake.”

I enjoyed this one better than Angela’s Ashes !

This book would get five stars, except that it isn't -quite- as great as Angela's Ashes, which makes it seem a bit disappointing. In comparison to that book, it is also somewhat less inspiring, in the sense that AA tells a story of perseverance over hardship as Frank survives all by carrying his dream of going to America through times of crushing poverty. In _'Tis_ he finally makes it to America, and things still are not perfect. In fact he still spends a lot of time feeling afraid and too insecure to live the life he really desires. Although that makes this less of a feel-good experience, it also makes it a more subtle comment on Life, and required a degree of self-honesty from McCourt that most authors never attain. His prose remains liltingly poetic, and it is a joy to read, even when the subject matter is depressing or disappointing.

Mccourt was my English teacher for the 1986-87 school year in High school, which is why I still think of him as "Mr. McCourt," rather than "Frank," in spite of his informal writing style. He did not include me as a character in this book (although he mentioned some of my classmates), which disappointed me at the time, but actually may be a good thing in retrospect. Having one's awkward adolescence immortalized in such incisive prose might be a bit overwhelming. I'm just glad that Mr. McCourt did it for the rest of us.

Ik vind het een beetje lastig (en bezwaarlijk) om iemands eigen geschreven biografie een sterrenrating te geven. Niet omdat McCourt zichzelf overdreven heilig neerzet - helemaal niet zelfs. Het is meer dat ik dit boek minder mooi geschreven en minder interessant vond dan McCourts vorige boek, De As van mijn Moeder. Maar hoe geef je een rating aan iemands leven - hoe verklaar je je het minder interessant vond dan alle drama in zijn jeugd? Misschien komt het ook omdat ik niet zo van Amerika ben en eerder mij interesseer in Ierland. Misschien komt het omdat McCourt nogal wat jammerend en zelfmedelijdend overkomt in dit boek. Het komt zeker ook door de vele personages die uit het niets opdoemen die mij niets zeiden (waren ze al geïntroduceerd? Moet ik deze mensen kennen?). Het vorige boek maakte mij wereldwijzer - dit niet echt. Allemaal punten die aangeven dat ik mijzelf forceerde dit boek uit te lezen, omdat je toch wil weten hoe het min of meer afloopt met alle broers en McCourt zelf. Was het het waard? Meh. Raad dit boek niet echt aan. De eerste memoire is goed geschreven, boeiend en leerzaam, dus lees lekker die en laat deze links liggen (sorry meneer McCourt, ook al bent u dood en ken ik u verder niet)

All a bit sad.

What happens when your dreams come true and you're still not happy?

After the shocking story of "Angelas's Ashes", any sequel was likely to suffer and unfortunately this one does too.

This is the often told tale of a young man arriving in the big city and the adventures that befall him.

Frank McCourt arrives in New York aged 19, joins the US army and eventually becomes a teacher. It's everything he wanted or dreamed about as a child in Limerick. But he's still not happy.

Like his father, he has problems with alcohol, and it causes him problems with jobs and relationships.

There is a lot of grown up introspection from Frank, no longer the ignorant kid from the lanes. He sees a lot of racism in America, not just black and white, but anti-Irish, whites against Puerto Ricans, Italians looking down on everyone and so on.

Of course there are still lots of very funny lines and sequences as you'd expect from McCourt. Everyone of Irish descent that he meets, tells him where their mother and father came from in Ireland.

Frank tells stories about lots of amazing characters, and these are so many that he must have amalgamated his own and other stories. Frank is a master storyteller and I suspect teller of tall tales, but that doesn't make them any the less entertaining.

The sadness continues when his father who swears he has given up the drink arrives from Ireland, he is taken off the boat in restraints, blind drunk.

His mother, Angela, is lonely in America, and she irritates Frank, even though he knows how much he owes her.

His brothers are falling prey to drink, and the cycle of alcoholism continues.

I suppose it's the story all families go through: kids grow up, parents become a burden: kids have kids and it begins again.

At the end of Bob Geldof's autobiography, he is standing outside Wembley late at night after the Live Aid concert, when a man says to him "Is that it?"

And as Frank McCourt would say "'Tis."

I will read the final volume of memoirs "Teaching Man" but I expect it to be more of the same. Entertaining but nothing more than that.