Word: memoirs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...most of his life, until he was well into his 60s, Frank McCourt wasn't a writer; he was a teacher. But it is as a writer, the author of the wildly successful memoir Angela's Ashes, that he will be remembered. He died on July 19 in New York of meningitis. He was 78 years old. (Read TIME's 1996 piece on Angela's Ashes...
McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1930 - he would later, much later, memorably describe the scene of his conception in his memoir - but he grew up in Ireland. His parents were both Irish immigrants, and they moved back there, to Limerick, in an effort to stay ahead of McCourt's father's drinking problem. They didn't succeed. Malachy, Frank's father, worked intermittently as a laborer, but he drank constantly...
...result was his memoir Angela's Ashes, which appeared in 1996, when McCourt was 66. The book told the story of his early years in a voice purged of anger and bitterness and self-pity. In an extraordinary act of forgiveness, he wrote about his father with humor and even compassion. Angela's Ashes was published quietly, as the personal memoir of an Irish childhood. "My dream was to have a Library of Congress catalog number, that's all," McCourt said. But it became first a critical sensation, then a runaway best seller. In 1997 McCourt won the National Book...
McCourt followed Angela's Ashes with two more volumes of memoir. 'Tis picked up where his first book left off, on his arrival in New York City; it sold spectacularly but received mixed reviews. Teacher Man - which was both a critical and commercial success - recounted his backbreaking years teaching English and creative writing, 18 of them spent at New York's famous magnet school Stuyvesant, where he was a legend as a compelling teacher. "George Bernard Shaw said those that can do, and those that can't teach," McCourt was fond of observing. "Just goes to show that Shaw didn...
Middle America's favorite anchor was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, and as he recalled in his memoir A Reporter's Life, he developed a taste for reporting and news analysis early. While living in Kansas City at age six, he ran to a friend's house with a newspaper story about the death of President Warren Harding. "Look carefully at that picture," he told his friend. "It's the last picture you will ever see of Warren Harding." With typical self-deprecation, the elder Cronkite wrote: "I record it here today to establish my early predisposition to editorial work...