WITH characteristically mischievous humour, Frank McCourt insisted that when he died, there was to be much mourning and keening. So we were told by Frank’s’ friend, the writer Peter Quinn, who recently hosted an evening in New York called, simply, Remembering Frank McCourt. A throwaway comment, but also an ambivalent one about what Frank called the Poor Banished Children of Eve note in Irish culture, the note to which he was especially attuned, which stung him into becoming a writer.
There was, initially, laughter at the slightly delayed start of the memorial. Did that make it more of an Irish event? From where I sat, it was very much New York’s goodbye. A sense of loss for a well-loved teacher, writer, raconteur and friend came through: we were, after all, in Symphony Space, at Broadway and 95th Street, where Frank McCourt had often given Bloomsday readings. With Frank’s lively laughing face on the screen behind them, his daughter and granddaughter spoke of the special wrench of his parting. But no one did much keening: the mood was definitely celebratory. As a showman and actor, Frank would have relished the big turnout, (an almost full house of 750 seats) and the good humour with which we participated, laughing, clapping, listening and singing.
Susan Gilman, formerly a high-school student of Frank’s, now herself a successful writer, spoke of how Frank’s childlike enthusiasm had touched his classes’ lives. She described Mr McCourt prodding his students to believe they too could write something worthwhile. He had them recall what they had eaten the previous night, write courtroom defences of everyday household objects, and participate in an open mic, every Friday.
He encouraged them to send vignettes to the Village Voice: reviews, not of shows, but of churches and schools. Joel Klein, the chancellor of New York City Schools announced that Brandeis High School will be renamed in Frank's honour, and will specialise in creative writing. Frank's late start as a writer belied F Scott Fitzgerald's saying that there are no second acts in American lives.
Czeslaw Milosz wrote that when a writer is born into a family, that family is finished. Frank's memoir didn't so much finish his family as pull aside a cloak of secrecy born of shame, open up stories of defeat to light and air. It also stands as a testimony to the resilience of his mother and of many mothers, in the dark decades. As Gore Vidal says, "Everything comes out in the end, and none of it really matters". Maybe here it did matter that it came out. In America, Frank learned that since everyone's experience is valuable, you might as well spill the beans, and this fruitfully overcame the Irish reflex for Omerta.
The main target of what Terry George called Frank’s “righteous outrage” was less the hypocrisy of Limerick than the hypocrisy of everywhere: the smugness of any establishment which ignored or denied the suffering of families in back lanes and alleys. For his native city, he rescued the names of the lanes, and the names of those who lived there. As much as the pillars of lay society, Frank loathed the institutional church.
However, as Peter Quinn recalled, he didn’t claim to know better for others. He saw religion as a map that some might follow, others throw away. He paid the church the compliment of taking it at its word, and that word was the Beatitudes. He always felt a bond with Francis of Assisi, a mensch, someone who bore witness. In the same vein was his friend Fr Aengus Finucane, whose photo, laughing with Frank, had an extra poignancy. He died the day before the memorial. Concern was Frank’s favourite charity, and he honoured anyone who, like Fr Finucane, lived the Beatitudes in practice.
The consul general Niall Burgess recalled one out of many witty remarks.
When giving money to a homeless man, he asked: "How do I know you won't spend it on soup?" Patricia Harty, the editor of Irish America, recalled how Frank's answering machine message promised "If you leave your number, we will respond with alacrity." Here was his relish for words, and his genuine readiness to help. Another Irish writer turned New York resident, Colum McCann, spoke of how reading McCourt had led him into the labyrinth of his own history, by demonstrating the value of being present in your own life, of saying something that has not been said before.
Nan Graham, the editor at Scribners explained that she was so impressed when she started to read Angela's Ashesin manuscript, that she overlooked how it broke every rule about presentation: single-spaced, on onionskin paper, with the Os broken through the paper. Frank rejoiced in his fame, offering immediately to undertake a 15-year book tour.
And there were scenes from shorter tours, in Buddhist temples, at Sydney Harbour, beside the Eiffel Tower.
After the last section, when the musicians, led by Matt Molloy, took the stage and played us out, people dispersed slowly, hoarding the spirit of the evening. We seemed like the mourners in Sean O'Faolain's story, The Silence of the Valley, "loath to admit that something final had happened to them all". Again, the trouper Frank surely knows that we had enjoyed his celebration. ("Leave them laughing"). Everyone was talking to the person they had come with, or someone they had just found at their side.
It was New York, after all. I moved out into the street, revved up by words and a tune that ran continually through my head. They came from another, more fearless and wayward rebel. Part of the tribute from Frank's brother Malachy McCourt came from Brendan Behan's The Hostage.
“The bells of Hell go ting a ling a ling for you but not for me, O, death where is thy sting aling aling, or grave thy victory?” His late start as a writer offers real inspiration. No one ever had a happier second act, as he claimed entitlement to what the Founding Fathers listed as the pursuit of happiness.