Results tagged “frankmccourt”

The NY Times and Daily News speak to former students of NYC public school teacher turned bestselling memoirist Frank McCourt, who passed away on Sunday. One woman told the Times, "We all thought, ‘He’s such a genius, what’s he doing just teaching us?’ Everybody thought he was destined for bigger and better things. And when he became a global phenomenon, we felt it was justice." Another revealed to the News, "I was not a big reader back then, until he taught us 'Moby Dick.' I mean, the whale was in our classroom. I read everything ['Moby Dick' author Herman] Melville wrote after that. All of a sudden, I spent all my time in the library because of Frank McCourt."

Frank McCourt, the NYC public school teacher turned bestselling author of Angela's Ashes, a memoir about his harsh childhood, died at age 78 today in Manhattan. He had been ill with meningitis and his cause of death was metastatic melanoma.

The holidays are fast approaching and if you're a book lover in the city, you're more likely to be at a store buying a book as a gift than attending a reading this week, but nonetheless, there are some stellar choices for auditory literary entertainment, we humbly digest them for you:

Frank McCourt, beloved storyteller of early Irish upbringing to immigrant dreams in America, has a new book out about his experiences as a teacher at public high school, including Stuyvesant, called Teacher Man. McCourt, who retired from teaching in 1987, cast a spell on his Stuyvesant students and even some of the less-priveleged ones at other school, and there even seems to have been a Frank McCourt Fan/Stalker Club back at the East 15th Street School. But a day before the sweet NY Times feature about McCourt and his adoring students, Michiko Kakutani reviewed the book, calling it "tepid" and rehashed stuff he's written about before, basically implying that McCourt should stick to writing depressing yet charming things about drunken Irish fathers and put-upon mothers. However, what's cool about Frank McCourt is that he ate the sandwich that was thrown at him from a rowdy student.