SEZ I TO MYSELF

A compendium of commentary published by the brothers McCourt in periodicals large and small.

Frank McCourt, the award-winning author of the memoir Angela’s Ashes (1996), died in 2009 at 72; his brother, Malachy, an actor and writer himself, in 2024 at 92. Frank was also a committed high school teacher, and the current collection was compiled by Tom Allon, a colleague he befriended at Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School who later became both his and Malachy’s editor at a neighborhood newspaper called The West Side Spirit. Allon and his son, Jonah, selected articles, starting with Frank’s encomium to McSorley’s Old Ale House, published a decade before Angela’s Ashes in The West Side Spirit; they arranged them in sections dedicated to the writing life, to McCourt family stories (many familiar, and repeated more than once here), as well as to Irish identity, Christianity and religion, teaching, and more. The latest piece in the collection is also by Frank; it’s a moving discussion of spirituality and prayer from Life magazine, from 2004. There are many highlights along the way for devotees of these zesty Hibernian wordsmiths. In a piece discussing sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, including his own, Malachy writes, “I forgive you, you rotten rat’s abortion, you diarrhea of a hyena, you snake snot, you sperm of a cockroach.” In a discussion of the potato penned for The Irish Voice, Frank writes, “England’s major contributions to the world, then, are Christianity, civilization, and cholesterol. (You may quibble about the first two but my advice is to go and have some mashed potatoes and you won’t give a tinker’s damn in the heel of the hunt entailed as you’ll be in the toils of Eros.)” In “Deadhead Daughter,” a surprising and poignant piece written for Rolling Stone in 1998, Frank reviews his experiences as a father: “How was I to know my biggest rival would be Jerry Garcia?” In a reaction to 9/11, Malachy—who ran for governor of New York State in 2006—advises, “Drop the word ‘hate’ from your vocabulary.”

Ah, yes, we remember these guys. With pleasure.