Comments on: A Tribute to Frank McCourt

By: Tommy Burton

Tommy Burton — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Ann very nice post about Frank McCourt. I’m sorry to have missed the Symphony Space memorial.
I recommend everyone seeing “A Couple of Blaggards” when it comes around to a local playhouse. It is a two man play based on Angela’s Ashes. Originally done by Frank and Malachy These days it may be any two random Irish guys. It can be googled.
Often in my family a pub was rented out or descended upon after the coffin was safely tucked away. It was strangely the best of family gatherings and often the only time you saw the extended family.

By: Laurie

Laurie — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Ann…thank you for sharing this post…I have been to Irish wakes and started laughing out loud as you explained the process…how true…we do love our Drama..but enjoy the laughter that comes from it just as much….
I think the movie idea sounds wonderful!!!!
also kudos to NYC for honoring Frank in such an amazing way……

By: liz

liz — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Love the idea of an Irish wake film/play. Reading your description brought back my father’s so vividly. I never thought I would laugh at my own father’s wake but I sure did. (Tears were well mixed in.) My Dad was from the auld sod and would tell us stories of wakes at home. He was from the country and my favorite was about an old neighbor who had passed. Unfortunately, he died sitting up and was not found until he became stiff so he was tied down on the bed during the wake. Well, the wake proceeded and the neighbors stayed on and with them was the beer and whiskey. Well, a couple of the boys came in while the older men were busy talking and drinking, they cut the rope and up popped the dead man! Needless to say there were many a colorful word expressed that evening and grown men running from the room. My father never confessed to being one of those young boys but his account was so detailed that it makes me wonder.
On a personal note, my favorite part of a wake in Ireland is that the dead are brought home to be waked. They are in their own beloved home and are never left alone there. Also, deep in the country, the neighbors dig the graves for the family.

By: uncle sull

uncle sull — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

I second Gloria’s recommendation of the film The Dead. Absolutely beautiful.

By: Ann Leary

Ann Leary — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Welcome back Kim! Where on earth have you been?

By: Guadalupe M Pankratz

Guadalupe M Pankratz — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

By PETER DUFFY
Frank McCourt, who died on Sunday at age 78, was the most Catholic of authors.
The rites and rituals of Ireland’s Catholic Church of the 1930s and ’40s exist at the core of “Angela’s Ashes” (1996), his great Bildungsroman. That book’s hilarious and irreverent chapter on Mr. McCourt’s preparation for, and eventual ill-fated reception of, First Communion set down for all history what it was like to sit before an old Irish “master,” named Mr. Benson in this case, and have very pre-Vatican II lessons pummeled (literally) into your pre-teenage brain.
“He tells us we have to know the catechism backwards, forwards and sideways,” Mr. McCourt writes. “We have to know the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Virtues, Divine and Moral, the Seven Sacraments, the Seven Deadly Sins. We have to know by heart all the prayers, the Hail Mary, the Our Father, the Confiteor, the Apostles’ Creed, the Act of Contrition, the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary. . . . He tells us we’re hopeless, the worst class he ever had for First Communion but as sure as God made little apples he’ll make Catholics of us, he’ll beat the idler out of us and Sanctifying Grace into us.”
Mr. Benson, who inhabits the same spiritual rectory as the fiery Father Arnall in James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” didn’t quite succeed in making an orthodox Catholic out of Frank McCourt. In fact, Mr. McCourt was one of the church’s principal public antagonists. He delighted in delivering bawdy riffs against what he saw as the church’s hypocrisy, cruelty and joylessness. “I was so angry for so long, I could hardly have a conversation without getting in an argument,” he once said.

By: Kim

Kim — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Ann: Have not been here in a long while. I felt like I had an online DVR – rifled through the topics and the fabulous photos over the last two months. I forgot how much I loved it here.

By: Gloria

Gloria — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

The short story “The Dead” by James Joyce and its film version with Angelica Huston seemed to portray an Irish wake, even though it was simply a gathering. There’s such an aristocratic quality about her.
Gloria

By: Lynne

Lynne — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Tammy-Sounds like you are, too—a wonderful woman with a beautiful soul, that is!
Best wishes, Lynne

By: tammy

tammy — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Thank you for your kind comments. I read that glass castle book too which is wonderful. I think the great thing about Frank was he captured the humor of the situations. We laughed a lot at the absurdity of it all and being broke. The date incident when I told my mom about it that night we laughed ourselves silly. Frank took all the laughter inside the family and showed me you can share it with others. He was just a wonderful man with a beautiful soul.