Vormancian's Full Review: Frank McCourt - Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
I should make it clear from the beginning, that I have no real love for biographies. There was a time that a biography was written with some purpose. The story of a person’s life was generally not put down on paper for no other reason than to put it down on paper. Biographies were interesting because there was some point, some life lesson, not merely because there was ‘dirt’ on the person, or because you could make a few bucks. Somewhere along the way, biographies became interesting simply because people didn’t have as much opportunity to smear the neighbors while doing the laundry, at the water cooler, or over a beer at the local pub.
Autobiographies are even worse. There isn’t much ‘dirt’ being dished out, but there is a grand opportunity to (hopefully subtly, but not always) let the world know how great you are, or how you made it through the sad life you had.
They aren’t all like this, of course, but when everyone who ever becomes the slightest bit famous for any reason has a biography and/or an autobiography, it becomes so difficult to find one that has any value that you lose all faith in the entire genre.
Even when the person in question is not famous, the biographies tend toward being self-serving and/or so much crying circle fodder.
Angela’s Ashes makes a break from what has now become tradition, and tells a story that has a purpose. It may not have been intended to include many of the important life lessons that it does, but intent is not really required, only that they are there.
There are a lot of powerful and important things to be learned from this book, and more importantly, the book does not force them on you and become an after-school special.
There are a lot of reasons you might not tell someone something, even (or especially, depending on the case) someone you love. There is a great difference between being ashamed and being proud, and there is an acceptable, and even a morally correct level of pride.
A mother may not be too proud to go to the rich priest’s house to stand in a line and beg for the scraps of the priest’s dinner. If confronted with the fact that she did so, she may not be ashamed to admit that she did it. Having to do what one must do to try and get a scrap of meat and a few potatoes to feed her four children. But, when she is leaving the house to go she does not tell her children that’s where she’s going, and when she comes home she does not explain where she got the food. She does not hold her head up high on the way home from the priest’s house with the food, but she holds her head high when she walks through the street the next day with her four boys who’ve had a bit to eat.
It won’t break her to do whatever she has to in order to make sure her family survives. It might break her for her sons to look at her when she can see the word ‘beggar’ behind their eyes.
We also get a nice look at ideas of men and women, most especially (since it’s the story of a man) what it means to be a man.
You can go too far with ideas of equality between the sexes. Now, surely, in most ways the sexes should be treated equally, but if you sit yourself too deep in the saddle along these lines, you might start thinking that the sexes are, not only equal, but that they are the same. You might be a man and think to yourself that you think, feel, or act a certain way so (since we are all people, and all people are equal) why don’t women (or why doesn’t some particular woman) think, feel, and act the same way. You might be a woman, and it might trouble you that you see something one way, or that it seems obvious to you that the thing to do in a certain situation is this or that, and why don’t men see that this or that is the way ‘it is’.
Now, maybe this seems too simplistic. Yes, yes, men and women are different and act differently, we all know that. Well, maybe that’s why it takes a whole book, and not a short essay. It’s not a simple thing at all, and such ridiculous ideas as, ‘Yeah, men go to bars and get in fights because someone looks at them wrong,’ and, ‘Men say insensitive things without thinking,’ don’t begin to touch on it.
There are two things everyone thinks about in any situation, and both things reflect greatly on a person’s self-image. Being a good person, and being a man (or being a woman). Being a good person is rather general, and is universal across sexes. Being a man, is obviously not universal across sexes, but it is also usually very specific, and is defined more as a result of person’s upbringing than on anything that has been decided at large. There are, of course, generalities that most people would agree have to be adhered to as part of a proper definition of a man, but there are many specifics that most people would probably also agree are open to individual interpretation, either choice (if there are only two) comprising an acceptable definition of a man.
There are many situations (and I don’t really want to spend the space to give an example, as this is long enough, and you can easily think of your own example.... or ask a man to give you one) where either of two options would not really be a case of being a good person or a bad person, but the man in the situation has serious concerns that it is a case of being a good or bad man. Sometimes the respect you have for yourself, and the respect other people have for you because you/they consider you a good man is all you have, and you can’t give that away no matter if they make you a saint for all the good person you were.
Sometimes, the ideas surrounding a situation conflict when looked at as whether they would make a good man or a good woman. A woman might find it very clear that thing to do is this, and can’t imagine where they wouldn’t do it, but a man looking at that situation might consider it just as clear that if he were to do it he wouldn’t be able to show his face in the world, or call himself a man.
So, how does the book get us all this (and much more, including the idea that you’ve done no one a good turn by exposing them to the Catholic church at a young age)?
The story is of Frank McCourt. Born in America during prohibition, and dragged over to Ireland when he was four. Malachy McCourt, Frank’s father, ran from Ireland to America because there was a price on his head due to some activities with IRA. Shortly after arriving in America, Malachy met Angela Sheehan. When Angela gets pregnant, and mostly as a result of the interference and insistence of some of her relatives, Malachy and Angela marry.
They are quite poor, and the fact that Malachy does his best to drink any amount money he gets his hands on certainly doesn’t help the fact. Before long, Frank has a brother Malachy who is one year younger than Frank, and twin brothers Oliver and Eugene three years younger.
Their life in America does not progress well at all, dad always on the drink, and they soon go back to Ireland, in the end, Limerick.
Frank’s father can hardly get a job, and whether he is collecting wages for work, or money for the dole (welfarish money), he’s doing his best to make sure the Guinness family is well taken care of. Sometimes he does okay holding a job and actually bringing the money home, but it doesn’t last more than a few weeks. Eventually, he’s gone altogether, off to England for the good jobs they have because of the war. And, he never sends any money back of course.
Frank’s mother, Angela, does everything she can to pull her family through. At times they shuffle from one house to another, or have to stay with relatives where they can. Depending on the current level of desperation, Angela does everything she can think to at least get a few schillings for bread, and maybe a bit of turf for the fire.
We walk alongside Frank as he goes to the Catholic school in Limerick, where a wrong answer means the stick, a right answer might mean the stick if you’ve got the wrong sort of tone, being late is the stick, missing altogether is the stick, looking the wrong direction is the stick, and you’re probably going to get the galloping consumption at any rate, so why bother.
As time goes on, Frank is desperate to have a job and be a man, and when a friend of the family offers to take him on a Saturday along to deliver hundredweights of coal for a schilling, Frank jumps. This is after Frank has already had a several month hospital stay with typhoid, and has had such a bad case of conjunctivitis that he is forever in danger of ruining his eyes altogether, especially with the coal dust getting in them. It’s nothing to him though, he has a schilling, and maybe a tip.
The book is a wonderful look at life, and takes us from hardship to hardship with a sort of reckless abandon that you can hardly wonder that so many things might actually happen to a person, especially since most of the worst happens before he is sixteen.
There is a great ‘richness’ displayed in the book that is amazing to see in a person who had it rough in a way most people could never understand if they were dropped a thousand miles in the middle of a forest, and left to fend for themselves. Despite the worst of conditions Frank manages a bit of hope, and takes something from life by giving something to it. As he contemplates some of the other, ‘richer’ people in town, after he spends a day with his brothers playing in their house, as poor as they can be... they don’t have grand times like that, they may have electric light, but no grand times.
The book is written in much the style you might expect if you found Frank’s diary under his bed, and started poking through it, except that it is somewhat spruced up for publication. Wonderfully written, with a real emphasis on making the flow that of someone simply talking to you.
There are few biographies of any sort that I would recommend, but I don’t know that I could recommend this more. I can think of no single book that I would be more inclined to offer if someone wanted to understand men, or know why men do what they do. I can only think of a few that I would sooner turn to if someone wanted a good overall idea of what life is all about.
I understand this book is somewhat more popular with women than men, and I’m torn on that subject. It’s great for the women, but I daresay there are men that could use a few ideas about being men as well.
If you read only one biographical work in your life make it the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, but if you read two read this one.
The luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland, Frank's...More at Bostic Media
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