epilogue

Who doesn’t have dreams and hesitations about a life not lived, or, realized to the fullest potentials? I for one always wanted to write, but the pursuit of bread and the classic peer environ in the Indian middle-class made me pursue other interests.

When I first found out that Frank McCourt actually wrote his first piece, Angela’s Ashes, towards the end of his life; I thought there was still some hope left in the writer in me. I picked up the book and found it to be an extremely good read. He won the Pulitzer for it the next year.

He followed Angela’s Ashes with ‘Tis, and Teacher Man; both of them bettered Angela’s Ashes to a good degree. Frank McCourt maintained that literature essentially is the art of story-telling, nothing more, nothing less. His work, mostly based on his own life were fine examples of stories excellently told. While most blamed him for starting a trend of misery-memoirs, I felt his stories were poignant and unsentimental celebrations of hope.

Frank McCourt died yesterday of cancer related complications in New York City. Towards the end of his life, McCourt made a foray into children’s writing with Angela and the Baby Jesus. It drew on a story his mother told him about how, as a child, she had worried that the life-size baby Jesus in the Christmas crib at St Joseph’s church might be cold at night. To this, Frank went on to lament:

You know what they’ll say? The old bastard, he knows the end is near and he’s trying to redeem himself, so he writes this sweet little religious book… Maybe I should write a saint’s biography quickly, just to make sure.

May his soul rest in peace.

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