Angela's What?

Channel surfing with cable rarely nets positive results. I hate to do it. Yet
On the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, a public access cable station, I espied something I haven't seen for years and years.
(Strangely, this was during a commercial in Grease 2, something else I hadn't seen for years and years, not since high school, in fact. It was sort of an old home television week going on for me.)
An old white guy was wearing glasses on television. I didn't know at first what station it was, but the production values proved that it was no network station. A black and white gray haired man read while the camera close-upped on his jowly unattractive features.
I wasn't sure who it was, but I suspected.
McCourt.
He was reading from one of his prose pieces, though it seemed like he was only barely reading, mostly channeling the sentences he'd conceived so long ago. Maybe in my class.
Frank McCourt taught English at my high school, many years running. I took his class maybe twice, and most of my friends doubled that count. Everyone wanted to be in the guy's class.
He was great. Funny, charming, lax, relaxed, loose, Irish, and totally ignorant of the curriculum. He taught English by doing stand-up for us each day during his period. The first semester I had him, my Sophomore year, he taught us in a shop class, with no blackboard, no desks, no ventilation, and no homework.
We were supposed to be writing, and each day, anyone who had anything to share would volunteer to read. Few did. I never did. My friend sitting next to me never did, and he was an infinitely better writer than I was, at least, in the style of the moment.
McCourt told stories all the time, from the center of the Greek stage that the metal shop class became, each day after lunch. His stories were funny, exceedingly funny, so the stories we were expected to be told were expected to be similarly funny. I, for one, knew I couldn't compete with this professional monster performer. Even then, I knew that McCourt was not a teacher, but a performer.
I might have figured that out from his inviting all his students to his off-Broadway show, A Couple of Blaguards, with his brother Malachy, a known soap opera actor. During that first sophomore semester in his class, I saw that show twice. It was all about their remembrances of Irish days past, coming to America, and other such immigrant ideas. It was much fun, and much more Malachy's baby than Frank McCourt, my teacher's. I hadn't seen anyone upstage McCourt before. It was eerie, and fun. The show, I mean.
The class was fun, and I didn't mind too much not learning anything from the guy. His stories were witty, and there might have been some insight in what he shared, but they were, after all, stories, and any intelligence we students would gleam them was of our own design. Again, I didn't mind. All my other classes gave me more than enough subject matter to keep me busy. So what if I didn't read any classics that semester, or any other? After all, I'd be taking McCourt classes from then on. He was so personable, and, even if I'd never actually written anything for him, I knew we got along really well. We had a relationship. He was an artist -- of some sort -- and so was I.
I was shocked to discover that I didn't get into any of McCourt's several second semester sophomore English classes, and asked him to intercede for me. When he looked at me as we spoke, I could tell he didn't recognize me. He explained he could do nothing to help me.
My friend sitting next to me shrugged helplessly, as he was scheduled to have McCourt at the end of the day. I got stuck in some ridiculous class where I had to read Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye. Sometimes, there's no justice.
When I was getting ready to graduate, I found myself unwittingly in another McCourt class, and I was more comfortable with my writing, so I shared with the group. One tiny poem about my parents, full of pathos and poesy, gained me considerably acclaim for the course of a sentence. It didn't matter. McCourt's approval meant a little less to me by then.
Still, as I was just about out the door of Stuyvesant, and my group the Lunatic Fringe had presumably finished all that it was going to, McCourt saw me in the hall.
"I have something for you," he said, handing me a book.
"What?" I said, and then looked at it.
"The Comic Vision," I read to myself. It was an analysis of humor, already some twenty years old when I received it. I still have it today.
"Thanks a lot," I said, looking up at my senior English teacher, "I'll read it."
Someday, I may.
He left the school around the same time I did, allegedly to work on his fiction. He had a novel that he never failed to tell his students about. It sounded great, though absurd. I remember the details were confusing, about an Irish Jewish émigré to the US, and that, when the book came out, I'd be able to clarify what it was all about.
Maybe some day, I'll be able to.
Still, in those ensuing ten years, he must have kept himself busy somehow. Here he was, on a Wednesday night, on television. Somewhere in the background, I noticed, was his brother Malachy. The Gaelic accent was still pronounced for each of them, but then, they must be in sixties and beyond by now.
They were old men, Frank and Malachy, even then. Now, they were older. Frank was telling tales of his youth, just like he did then. What stories I heard sounded familiar, but also somewhat more somber. His tone was different. I got the sense he might be filming a wake, or a memorial, or something.
The title at the end of the show, Frank McCourt: Angela's Ashes, seemed to bear me out. Poor Angela had passed on, and now the misspelled McCourt had made a show out of it. Perhaps the woman would have appreciated it. I hope so.
It was good to see Mr. McCourt again. Not too different from the old days, but good. It was much like the old days, with him acting out in front of a bunch of people. There was no interaction between him and me miles and months away from the filming, or him and his live black and white audience. Just like old times.

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