Frank McCourt

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and one, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is a writer. The story he tells is his own, that of a child brought up in the grinding poverty of a limerick slum surrounded by death, disease and fear. He wrote it five years ago in New York, where he spent the last fifty years, having escaped to the city on stolen money at the age of nineteen. Now he's a literary lion, a multi-millionaire and a Pulitzer Prize winner. I was given the gift of a miserable childhood and a certain way with words, he says, but it took me a long time to find the voice to write my life story with simplicity and clarity, without adornment. He is the author of Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt. That's what you did, of course, Frank. You wrote it, that kind of stream of consciousness of a child. How did you find that voice?

Frank McCourt1:18

I suppose

Frank McCourt1:20

A lot of it is the result of all the years I spent in the classroom. I figured out that I'd had in my teaching career 11,000 American teenagers sitting in seats before me. And when you're dealing with them, your delivery, your presentation has to be simple and clear and it has to grip them, grab them, and be dramatic. I've always been scribbling in notebooks and trying to write this book for years. I wrote a version of it about 30 years ago called If You Live in a Lane.

Frank McCourt1:53

It wasn't bad, but it was literary.

Presenter1:55

Lane meaning a slum in terms yeah the lane

Frank McCourt1:56

Yeah, the language. So it wasn't it wasn't my voice at all. But but then I think uh there was a day in nineteen ninety four when I started writing Angel's Ashes and I wrote my earliest memory. And that was um I'm in a playground in Brooklyn with my brother Malachi.

Frank McCourt2:25

He's two, I'm three. We're on a seesaw. Up, down, up, down. He goes up, I go down, I get off.

Frank McCourt2:33

And he went down and bit his tongue. That was my earliest memory. And I wrote that in the present tense, with the simplicity of a three-year-old.

Speaker 12:36

Uh

Presenter2:36

Hmm.

Presenter2:38

Hmm.

Frank McCourt2:42

And that was it.

Presenter2:43

But you it took you so long. I mean, you were, as you say, you would have been sixty-four by the time you were in the middle of the day. Yeah, I was sixty-four. I mean, did you also think maybe

Frank McCourt2:46

It would have been sixty

Frank McCourt2:47

Yeah, it's 64.

Presenter2:51

That people wouldn't be interested in your life story? Or did you perhaps you couldn't face it? Perhaps psychologically you didn't want to get it all out because it was so awful?

Frank McCourt2:59

So

Frank McCourt3:00

I had to get this out of my system. Not that you ever do get it out of your system because you start peeling at the scab and it gets more you get or you find more sores.

Presenter3:09

But has it helped doing it? Has it been a therapy or has it improved?

Frank McCourt3:12

No, there's no therapy. You wish you could reach back into the past and heal things, but you can't. It's done. Uh my mother's sufferings were immense and the sufferings of most of those women in the lanes of Limerick who raised families with their husbands who were drunks or husbands who were absent. And that's the sad part of it, that uh there's nothing I can do about it. Except writing Angela's Ashes, I think it made some people aware of uh

Frank McCourt3:39

tribulations of of mothers. Not that I'm on a crusade for mothers or anything else, but I think it makes it mix some people have said to me, I look at my mother or my father in a new way.

Presenter3:49

Hmm.

Presenter3:51

Tell me about your first record.

Frank McCourt3:52

The first record is the Chieftains and the Rolling Stones uh playing the Rocky Road to Dublin. And Peddy Maloney himself, the head of the Chieftains, told me when they were recording it, this particular number became a jam session and they got into it da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da and the Stones, I think, more or less took over. It's a very unusual combination of Irish and rock.

Speaker 44:17

No longer stand and me fluff began to foil me temper I was losing for a learning style They began to kin harathy south and I shall lay the island line Galway miles for my They saw I was doubling with a loud hooray They joined in Z and Ray We quickly cleared the way for the rocky road And come with blood too great for while the hair and turn and down the rocky road And all the way to goblin went

Speaker 14:26

Exactly.

Presenter4:46

The Chieftains and the Rolling Stones and the Rocky Road to Dublin. The most amazing thing actually talking to you, Frank, is is the accent is so strong. Fifty years in the States. I mean, how come you haven't gotten infected anywhere?

Frank McCourt4:55

And so this

Frank McCourt4:58

Well, I didn't deliberately I didn't make a deliberate attempt to keep the accent. Sometimes because you get weary of being spotted uh in linguistically or accent wise and people say oh

Speaker 15:08

Ah.

Frank McCourt5:12

You're Irish. You're off the boat. You're off the boat and then you're labelled and you're categorized and and and they develop certain stereotypes about you. You drink and you're you're poetic and you're Catholic and all of this stuff. So sometimes I tried to disguise my accent but it never worked.

Speaker 15:13

Roth a boat

Presenter5:30

Talk about writing as a child. Did you did you do it? I mean, did you have papers and pencils? I mean, I think it's a good idea.

Frank McCourt5:35

Well, paper was very scarce, pencils were very scarce, but I would I would grab any kind of piece of paper that was lying around the place, uh paper bags, uh uh at at one time a house was being renovated or demolished, I found rolls of discarded wallpaper and I grabbed them and took them home and I scraped the plaster off them and uh I wrote epics on the back of this wallpaper.

Presenter6:02

But you wrote plays as well for the brothers too.

Frank McCourt6:03

Yeah, I I I would also write plays because I was I was the oldest of four, I would force my I was ten, I think. I would force my brothers to perform in these plays. They dealt with the they dealt with Ireland's great struggle against England. And and the Irish, from what we learned in the school, were always being hanged.

Frank McCourt6:21

by the mean English judges. So Alfie was a b was less than a year old. He was the youngest and he was I was the judge and I sentenced him to be hanged. And Malachi, my brother, was the hangman. So we didn't know what to do. We couldn't really hang him, although I contemplated it for reality. So in the back room that we had, which we never used, it was so damp, we hung him on an air by his collar. And we left him there. And he was very he was a very sweet kid. And we just went out and played in the lane, in the streets of Limerick, and left him there. My mother came home, she said, Where's the child?

Frank McCourt6:59

And she went frantic. It never occurred to her to look into that room. So finally uh she looked in there and I was called in. Frankie, come in here So they the the the playwright was called in.

Frank McCourt7:13

and knocked around the kitchen.

Presenter7:14

But he was all right.

Frank McCourt7:15

It was alright, yeah, it was queer. Thank you for

Frank McCourt7:19

Hanging from the rail, although there are some people who say he hasn't recovered from it since.

Presenter7:23

Yeah.

Presenter7:24

But the the school must have spotted you were clever. Your mother knew you were clever.

Frank McCourt7:28

One schoolmaster, Mr. O'Harland, he spotted something. He said he used to he this man had a a head like uh Franklin Del Rose with a great head. And he would lean back after reading something of mine and say, My boy, you are a literary genius And of course I had to put up with that in the schoolyard. They all teased me all the time, but he started writing.

Presenter7:49

But nobody therefore said you must do this because you are that's the point. Nobody held up and out.

Frank McCourt7:52

Yeah.

Frank McCourt7:53

That's the point.

Frank McCourt7:55

No, there was a there was no expectations of going to secondary school or or or going anywhere but out of the country.

Presenter8:04

Tell me about your second record.

Frank McCourt8:06

That

Frank McCourt8:07

In those days in ba in Limerick, we would go once in a while, we'd we'd we'd have the money to to go to the Lyrick Cinema, and I think one of the people who fascinated me was Fred Astaire. I wanted to be Fred Astaire, and that was another thing. I'd go home and grab one of my brothers and start dancing around the kitchen, and I thought he was the most elegant and stylish of of of any of anybody on the screen, Fred Astaire with top hat, white tie and tails.

Speaker 48:34

I just got an invitation through the mail.

Speaker 48:39

Your presence requested this evening is formal. Top hat, white tie, and tails. Nothing now could take the wind out of my sails.

Speaker 48:50

Cause I'm invited to step out this evening in top hat white time tail I'm in

Speaker 48:57

Putting on the top hat.

Speaker 48:59

Tying up my white tie, brushing off my tail, tried to stare.

Presenter9:03

Fredestaire and top hat white iron tails. Um the church doesn't come out too well in your story, Frank McCourt. They wouldn't make you an altar boy. They slam the door in your face.

Frank McCourt9:12

Yeah.

Presenter9:14

Didn't seem to be much charity available to the McCourts, who were obviously the poorest of the poor.

Frank McCourt9:18

We were the poorest of the poem um.

Frank McCourt9:21

My mother she'd go up to the Redemptress priests and they'd give her maybe loaves of bread and leftovers and so on.

Frank McCourt9:28

But um the the the priests were not charitable. They preached charity, but they didn't practice it.

Presenter9:34

And yet you liked going to church, weren't you? Yeah, I did.

Frank McCourt9:36

Yeah, I did. I like going to church. I like going to the churches because, first of all, they were warm, but that's only a superficial reason, because that was our only exposure to culture in the Redemptorist Church, particularly, w which had that fantastic, what would you call a Gothic architecture. And then inside on the cro on the walls with the fourteen stations of the cross, reproductions of va various famous, mostly Italian paintings, statues, and then the the the the drama of the high altar with the mass, the liturgy, the Latin and the Gregorian chant and the plain chant and the organ up in the loft. It was all very dramatic.

Presenter10:16

And did you know did you understand the Latin or you mouthed the Latin?

Frank McCourt10:19

Yeah, well, no, they had prayer books uh with it with the Latin on one side and the English on the other. So you'd switch back and forth. I don't I don't know how much Latin I absorbed from this uh I think I did because when my when my father then wanted

Frank McCourt10:32

to encourage me to become an altar boy. He had been an altar boy and he had the whole mass in his head and he taught me the Latin and uh he met made me kneel on the kitchen floor and I memorized the Latin and he took me over to Saint Joseph's Church to see if he could get me in as an altar boy and the door was slammed in our faces because it was obvious where we came from. We came from the back lanes of Limerick and they wanted more respectable boys.

Presenter10:57

But it would have been the way up and out, wouldn't it?

Frank McCourt10:59

I I I might have gone farther into the desire that every boy had to become a priest and my mother my mother all Irish mothers wanted their sons to become a priest. She wasn't too sure because at the back of my mother's mind all the time was the return to the States, New York, the Golden Land. That's the thing.

Presenter11:17

But it was in your mind as well when you dreamt about it.

Frank McCourt11:18

Yeah, I know, because well, you you played with all kinds of uh exits from from the lanes of Limerick. Uh that the dream was to go to New York. The other way out f for many young men and women that it was the church.

Presenter11:31

Next piece of music

Frank McCourt11:32

This is rooted in my admiration for James Joyce, Finnegan's Wake. And my my friend Patty Clancy was the one who kept who got the Clancy brothers going and Tommy Makeum a long, long time ago. And I I was at this concert where this was sung.

Frank McCourt11:49

in Carnegie Hall in 1963.

Frank McCourt11:53

Make it a little bit.

Speaker 411:54

Lived in Walker Street.

Frank McCourt11:55

Uh

Speaker 411:56

A gentle Irishman, mighty art

Speaker 412:00

He had a broad both rich and sweet, And to rise in the world he carried a heart.

Speaker 112:02

Money is in the world.

Speaker 412:05

You see, the sort of a tippler's way.

Speaker 412:07

With a love for the liquor he was born.

Speaker 412:11

And to help him on with his work each day.

Speaker 412:14

He did rub in the crater every mile and I know that's the a partner what the boy colour shake was it?

Presenter12:22

New Finnegan's Wake, sung by Tommy Makeham and the Clancy Brothers. So you escaped to America, Frank, with your rotting teeth.

Frank McCourt12:28

Yeah, in my my bad eyes. Nineteen forty nine I went back.

Presenter12:30

Thank you for

Presenter12:31

And you get a job s sweeping up in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel, which is full of all these glossy, preppy young students, everything that you were.

Frank McCourt12:35

Until we

Frank McCourt12:39

The uh complete opposite of what I was. That these this is what I could aspire to, the the boys from Yale and Harvard and these upper class rich girls. And they're there on the weekends to find a date. And everybody smokes, smoking the cigarettes, and I'm emptying the ashtrays. I try to move them among them like a shadow, hoping they wouldn't notice me. And I'm looking at them, taking furtive looks at these girls and desiring them desperately and committing the sin of lust, which is one of the seven deadly sins.

Presenter13:13

And not confessing it after.

Frank McCourt13:14

And not confessing because I I thought I was beyond redemption.

Presenter13:17

But what drives you on, then, when you're that miserable, when you're reduced that low, when you must have been thinking, Oh, God, I can't go back to Limerick, this is just even worse. What what makes you keep going?

Frank McCourt13:21

Yeah.

Frank McCourt13:24

Yeah, but

Frank McCourt13:28

I knew there was nothing for me in Ireland. There was no place to go.

Frank McCourt13:32

And then the n what ha what what saved me was uh that Mao Tsichung decided to send these legions into into Korea. And uh I was drafted into the American army, I suppose, to be sent to Korea, but they sent me to Germany instead, to where I'd spent two years w training dogs.

Frank McCourt13:52

That is the reason.

Presenter13:52

But as a result of that, you could get an elec uh get an education because G the GI Bill you were entitled to one.

Frank McCourt13:54

Yeah.

Frank McCourt13:56

The GI Bill was the most wonderful piece of legislation ever passed in America that that enabled me even though I didn't have any secondary school education, I was able to leap over that then I matriculated.

Presenter14:07

And you leapt over again and on and you became a teacher ultimately. And obviously you spent thirty years teaching. You're obviously a ver very good teacher. What was the appeal of it for you?

Frank McCourt14:19

I I in the first few years I didn't think I'd last.

Frank McCourt14:23

I thought my three brothers all went into the bar business and were making money and they were meeting people and

Presenter14:28

They'd all come over as well.

Frank McCourt14:29

They'll come over, yeah.

Presenter14:30

Yeah.

Frank McCourt14:30

Because I I'd go up to the various bars they worked in and they were having a good time and serving drinks and I'd try that little trick of staying out na late at nights and in the in the Lions Head bar in the village.

Presenter14:36

Yeah.

Frank McCourt14:44

or in any other bar and I'd go into I'd go into work in the morning with a sick head and you cannot do that. You cannot appear in front of American teenagers with a sick head. And I said, I have to give up this little game, which I did.

Presenter14:58

But it still says something else about you, that there was a single mindedness about this business, to to to to do this job, to do it properly, to be involved somehow with books, with writing, with people. That's that's what was driving you, wasn't it?

Frank McCourt15:01

Yeah.

Frank McCourt15:07

Okay.

Frank McCourt15:10

Yeah, well I thought in the beginning of the teaching career I thought I'd I'd quit, it was too hard, but I eventually I was seduced into it and it there were moments that I I was so anxious for the kids to come into the classroom, I wanted to get going and I didn't want the bell to ring, I didn't want them to leave because we'd get into things, we'd get into discussions and it it was it was mystical, it was ecstasy, it was the kind of thing you can't experience any place else unless you're in love or something like that, but this is with a large group of people and something is going, the damn bell rings and you want to tell them stay in the classroom because we're not finished. That's the kind of excitement that I had.

Presenter15:48

Record number four.

Frank McCourt15:50

When I was going to uh New York University, which was at one end of Manhattan in Greenwich Village, and I lived at the other end of Manhattan in Washington Heights, and the train I took was the A train, and that's why this has this take the A train of of Duke Ellington has special meaning for me.

Presenter15:54

Manhattan

Presenter17:06

Duke Ellington and his famous orchestra and Take the A Train.

Presenter17:10

In the course of all of this uh life in New York, Frank Record, you you met and married your own glossy, beautiful New England girl, and you had a daughter, Maggie. And when Maggie was eight years old, you you left forever and it was kinda history repeating itself in a way as your father and mother.

Frank McCourt17:24

Well, I didn't leave I didn't leave the way my father left. I I left becau to use an American term, beca of of of complete incompatibility. My dream was uh at one time, early in my American career, was to live in a loft with a ballerina. I would write and she'd go off and with Balanchine or somebody like that and and study her ballet and she'd come home and do her steps and then we'd make mad love and loft flow and we'd have wine and an apple and a t uh a a loaf of delicious bread. I wanted that kind of artistic life, but instead I met and married the the American middle class.

Speaker 117:33

Uh

Frank McCourt18:04

I thought at one time that's what I wanted. I want to be married to somebody, have a nice apartment or a nice house, and go home at night and have supper and go to the movies on Saturday night and have a couple of kids. But then I would have been dead at forty. And I knew there were other things I had an I suppose what you might call another program.

Presenter18:17

And I

Presenter18:21

You said you said somewhere, I read, that good taste pops up when imagination dies. That's right. That's what you felt, was it?

Frank McCourt18:26

That's right.

Frank McCourt18:27

That's what that yeah, because p people in the middle classes are always bragging about their good taste, which is bad taste, to brag about your good taste. Uh and she uh she not not it's not her fault, it w I we were we were ill suited and uh I should have run.

Frank McCourt18:43

What you did in here? She was a trophy. Yeah. Because she was the prom queen. She was blonde and blue. She was the kind of th

Presenter18:47

Yeah.

Frank McCourt18:52

Creature that I used to see on the in the movies that I wanted.

Presenter18:56

And the kind of creature you saw in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel and thought you could never get near.

Frank McCourt18:59

That's right. And thought you could get near. Yeah, yeah, Episcopalia and all that. Yeah. With a marvellous bosom.

Presenter19:06

Boof.

Frank McCourt19:06

Apocalyptic.

Presenter19:07

Apocalyptic.

Presenter19:10

What about your your father? I mean, I mentioned that he he walked out on you, he really did walk out on you, and you you never did you ever see him again? You were about eleven when he finally went.

Frank McCourt19:16

Yeah.

Frank McCourt19:20

He came he came sneaked into the city once or twice. To New York? No, in in in um in Limerick. But that didn't last long, he'd go back because he wasn't he didn't bring anything, he wasn't welcome.

Presenter19:33

We should explain it. I mean, he was a terrible alcoholic and he did drink the money on a Friday night in the pub when you were at home, your kids starving, and he humiliated your mother and all these things.

Frank McCourt19:35

And he did drink the money on Friday night in the

Frank McCourt19:39

Title

Frank McCourt19:40

Yeah.

Presenter19:42

But you went to his funeral. Um spool on now to w what the when you were in your fifties actually

Frank McCourt19:48

Yeah, in nineteen eighty five I was I was fifty-five.

Presenter19:50

You traveled all the way back to Ireland.

Frank McCourt19:52

Yeah, I went we went on from London.

Presenter19:53

Why would you do that?

Frank McCourt19:55

Because I suppose I was I I became aware of rituals in life, that certain things are that only happen once. Your mother dies once, your father dies once. Uh I wanted to be uh a present, I wanted to witness this. Which was very it's a sad okay, the sadness derived from from the waste of a life. He's wasted life.

Presenter20:16

Next piece of music.

Frank McCourt20:19

Ever since I was a kid in Limerick and and and listened to Mrs. Purcell's radio next door, I would listen to uh Radio Luxembourg or the Armed Forces Network, and very early in my life I became interested in jazz. And along the way, I don't know when, Dave Brubik swam into my life, and particularly this number, take five.

Speaker 420:40

The moment that

Speaker 420:48

Hmm,

Speaker 421:20

Da da da da da da da da da da da

Speaker 421:27

Uh

Presenter21:35

Take Brubeck and take five.

Presenter21:37

What about your mother, Frank, Angela herself? She eventually came over to the States, followed you over about ten years later. But you'd seen her through all those years. You'd seen her humiliated by the church, you'd seen her begging, humiliated by your father's drinking, scorned by her relations for marrying this drunken northerner.

Presenter21:57

All of that. And yet y you said that you couldn't quite reach out, you couldn't touch her, you couldn't

Presenter22:03

Somehow.

Presenter22:05

reconcile, you know, with why why not?

Frank McCourt22:07

Well, I I think um

Frank McCourt22:11

We weren't encouraged to show our emotions when we were kids. My brother Malachi one time when he was nine years old was in in the kitchen, and my mother was sitting there and for some reason got the urge

Frank McCourt22:22

To tell her.

Frank McCourt22:23

Ma'am, I love you.

Frank McCourt22:26

She looked at him.

Frank McCourt22:28

and said nothing, and he went back to the to the he was s j scribbling on a piece of paper, sort of reading a comic. And then her friend Brady Hannick came in, and they're sitting at the fire having tea.

Frank McCourt22:40

gossiping and Valiki is sitting there at the table. My mother says to to Bride, You know what he just said to me?

Frank McCourt22:47

What, says Pridy, he just said he loved me, and the two of them had a good laugh.

Frank McCourt22:52

And Malachy blushed scarlet and and and it was a long time before he ever told anybody he loved them again.

Presenter22:58

Perhaps the reason you couldn't therefore um come to terms with and reach out to her, as it were, is because you you felt resentment towards her, despite all of the pity you felt for her.

Frank McCourt23:07

I know she went through a lot, but then I wanted her to fight back. But now I realize uh that she was probably in a clinical depression of some kind. And I think if I had been a little more understanding and a little wiser, I could have helped her.

Presenter23:22

She'd have been

Presenter23:23

Incredibly upset by the book, wouldn't she?

Frank McCourt23:26

Oh, she would, yes, she'd because she she'd be ashamed. You just don't talk like that. You don't reveal yourself like that. Uh she used to say when we would joke, Malika and myself and the other brothers, we'd joke, we'd put on the d v deep limerick accent and so I'd I'd love a cup of tea or across the bridge. She said, Well, you stop that. That's in the past. She didn't like talking about it. No, that w that was shameful. People from slums don't want to talk about it. They want to move on. They want to be afraid of stayer.

Presenter23:44

Didn't like talking about the early years at all.

Frank McCourt23:54

And Ginger Rogers, you want to move up in the world.

Presenter23:57

What about the people of Limerick?'Cause, you know, the stories abound that that they are

Presenter24:03

Either made deeply ashamed by what you've written, or they are saying it's a web of lies, that it was never like that.

Frank McCourt24:09

But the the the people who are saying it's a web mobilized don't know what they're talking about. I thought I wrote about my family, I didn't write about Limerick, it could have happened in Galway or Belfast or anybody my generation knows the the extent of the poverty. So

Frank McCourt24:24

The few negative voices were that few.

Frank McCourt24:27

When Alan Parker put out the call for extras for the movie, they turned up in the hundreds, men, women, and small babies. And that nobody was complaining about the picture of Limerick. They know.

Presenter24:41

Number six.

Frank McCourt24:43

Well, since I live in New York and I love the streets of New York and I love the characters of New York and now that I can afford to go to Broadway shows, but this particular show, Guys and Dolls, I've loved for probably 40 years, and this particular number, which is real New York, is called a fugue for tin horns, but it's I got the horse right here.

Speaker 425:12

I got the horse right here, the name is Paul Revere, and here's a guy that says if the weather's clear, can do, can do, this guy says the horse can do, if he says the horse can do.

Speaker 425:27

Can do bird

Speaker 425:29

Can do

Speaker 425:30

I think of Valentine, cause on the morning line, the guy has got him figured out.

Presenter25:35

Fugue for Tin Horn sung by Stubby Kay and members of the men's chorus from the original soundtrack of the film Guys and Dolls. So now you're seventy years old, Frank McCourt.

Speaker 125:44

Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 125:46

People

Presenter25:46

Ask your opinion, they invite you on programmes, they invite you to sit on judging panels for books. Bill Clinton invited you to Martha's Vineyard. You sat next to him at dinner the other night.

Speaker 125:48

Invite you on.

Speaker 125:51

It's the

Frank McCourt25:52

Yeah.

Frank McCourt25:56

Yeah.

Presenter25:57

It's phenomenal really. It must make you laugh a bit.

Frank McCourt25:58

They m

Frank McCourt26:00

When you think that for thirty years I was a teacher nobody paid me a scrap of attention.

Frank McCourt26:05

Then you write a book and you're on the bestseller list and oh one actor that I've always admired was Gregory Peck. And I went to Los Angeles to do there was the doing of benefits for the Los Angeles Public Library. And the woman sitting next to me said, Would you like to meet Gregory Peck? And I've always admired him because Gregory Peck always picked powerful roles and and he was always he was always strong and and he's such a handsome man and such a terrific voice and remarkable eyebrows. So uh

Frank McCourt26:36

Uh I said, Oh, yeah, I'd love to And I we were walking through a corridor and he's approaching, he's a little weak in the legs now, and he saw me and he said, I want to tell you how much I admire your work.

Frank McCourt26:49

And I Jesus I said, this is the man that it that it was in Roman holiday with Audrey Hepburn at what and and he's telling me he admires my work.

Presenter26:59

What about the money itself? What's it I mean, in in crude terms, what what big difference? What do you have now that you've always wanted that you couldn't have?

Frank McCourt27:07

I have a bigger apartment in New York and I have a house in Connecticut. You everybody has to do that. You have to get a house in Connecticut and you have to make sure you're next door to Arthur Miller and down the street from and down the street from Bill Stein and Richard Woodmark and people like that, Dustin Hoffman, m all my pals.

Presenter27:18

And you are, right?

Presenter27:26

And what about, you know, just ordinary creature comforts? I mean,

Frank McCourt27:30

Oh, well, I th there isn't much I want. Uh and because of the money I'm able to take care of certain people in my family who who who need

Presenter27:37

Devil

Frank McCourt27:39

Who need help, and I'm able to do things outside of that like that.

Presenter27:43

I was going to say do you give to charity?

Frank McCourt27:45

Oh yeah, I do. Like Project Children in Ireland, where they they bring Catholic and Protestant kids from Northern Ireland over to the States. These are the things I'm interested in.

Presenter27:54

Because, you know, the irony of it all is is obvious, but nevertheless shocking that you had to experience that terrible, awful, miserable childhood.

Frank McCourt27:59

Uh

Frank McCourt28:00

Yeah.

Presenter28:03

Um, when your family would have given anything for a minuscule amount of what you have.

Frank McCourt28:08

Yeah. Oh, God, yeah. It's it's beyond the American dream.

Presenter28:13

Yeah.

Speaker 128:14

No music.

Frank McCourt28:15

A long, long time ago when I was teaching I um

Frank McCourt28:19

I would get them to listen to music of various kinds and have them respond. I play tapes on a on a on a boom box.

Frank McCourt28:27

And one of the things I had was an album called Missa Luba.

Frank McCourt28:32

an African mass which I loved, it was so so powerful.

Frank McCourt28:37

And uh I I began to become more interested in masses with the result that now that I'm I'm writing a mass called Missa Manhattan.

Frank McCourt28:46

And I started listening to masses. One of the first of the more formal masses I listened to was at Guno's St. Cecilia Mass, and the part that I particularly lifted my heart was the Kyrie from the St. Celia Mass of Guno.

Presenter30:00

Part of the Kyrie from Gunno's St. Cecilia Mass, sung by the Munich Motet Choir with the Munich Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hans Rudolph Tserbeli. Your wife, your now wife, Ellen, your third wife, um who I suppose discovered a year after marrying you that she'd married a Pulitzer Price.

Frank McCourt30:15

Yeah.

Frank McCourt30:17

Well, she uh she was the one who uh when I started reading little passages said, This is sensational or this is going to be sensational and I didn't believe her. Because she's um she she she's no fool, she's critical. Uh she's still critical what I what I do a talk or a or a lecture or something. She'll let me know.

Presenter30:17

What

Speaker 130:27

Yeah.

Speaker 430:27

Hmm.

Presenter30:38

So she's managing you. She's apparently got a file called Frank's Project and that mass writing is in it.

Frank McCourt30:38

Fish is manic.

Frank McCourt30:40

Because

Frank McCourt30:42

She does, yeah.

Presenter30:44

And also a documentary on saints and the reworking of a musical, all these things.

Frank McCourt30:47

Yeah, but

Frank McCourt30:50

There's a musical call of the Irish and how they got that way.

Presenter30:52

And a novel. Not a memoir, but a novel. A novel, yeah. What is it about?

Frank McCourt30:54

Not a ma

Frank McCourt30:55

A novel, yeah.

Frank McCourt30:57

Teaching

Presenter30:57

The one you should be home right now.

Frank McCourt30:58

The one I should be home writing right now and which I I I'm d beginning to despair of I'm not despair, I know I'll get to it, uh but it's in my head all the time. If I'm in a taxi or if I'm at dinner and people are talking, I wander off, I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking of opening lines and anecdotes and feelings. There are str and there are strange things that happen in life, there are fleeting feelings that you have or moments, epiphanies, Joyce called them. And I I feel like leaping out of the bed in the middle of the night, but I uh put in these th but this is what I'm consumed by now. Nothing else matters.

Presenter31:33

And it's borrowed again from your life?

Frank McCourt31:35

Oh yeah, it's autobio it'll it'll be fiction, but it'll be autobiographical fiction because

Presenter31:40

Has it got a title?

Frank McCourt31:41

I have half a dozen titles. I don't know what. I was even thinking of one yesterday. This is this book is such a mess now, I was thinking of calling it Mishmash.

Presenter31:50

But you'll be able to ride it on your desert island, get lots of peace on the

Frank McCourt31:53

Yeah, I'll be able to sit under a tree listening to uh

Frank McCourt31:57

Dave Bruback and Duke Ellington and the rest of them.

Presenter32:01

Tell me about the last one you listened to.

Frank McCourt32:03

This is a woman that I fell in love with. I first fell in love with the voice when I was a kid in Limerick, listening to Mrs. Purcell's radio. This came over Armed Forces Network, I think. This is the song that I want them to play at my funeral. And it's Billie Holiday singing I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby.

Speaker 432:31

But love.

Speaker 432:35

Baby.

Speaker 432:37

That's the only thing I've plenty of baby.

Speaker 432:47

Give him a wild, give a while.

Presenter32:53

Billie Holiday and I Can't Give You Anything But Love and that was recorded in 1936.

Presenter32:59

What about if you could only take one of these eight records? Which one would you choose, Frank?

Frank McCourt33:04

I'd have to take Goon and Saint Cecilia Mass. That would stir up all kinds of memories of of of the Church, Mass, guilt, sin, drama, liturgy. And besides it's joyful.

Frank McCourt33:15

It's it's such a beautiful piece of music.

Presenter33:18

And what about your book?

Frank McCourt33:19

I would take the Oxford and Oxford anthology of English verse. If I never got off the desert island I'd have I'd have English poetry from the Anglo Saxons up to Seamus Heaney. I say English, but in in English, Heaney being Irish.

Presenter33:34

And what about your luxury?

Frank McCourt33:35

What is a pair of binoculars?

Frank McCourt33:37

I'd want to look at the stars and uh I'd want to c uh scan the horizon to see if anything's approaching. And then I'd have to figure out a way of using it as a mirror so that the sun would reflect off it and somebody in the passing ship would see it. I wouldn't I wouldn't

Frank McCourt33:54

Well that does

Presenter33:55

No, you have something that's pure l unadulterated luxury that you can't use to get off the island. That's cheating.

Frank McCourt34:02

Well then I wouldn't use it for that purpose. I just use it scan the horizon. I just use it to look at the stars and to see passing birds migrating.

Presenter34:04

Yeah.

Presenter34:10

And I should believe you should I.

Frank McCourt34:12

Ha ha.

Presenter34:14

Frank Leccord, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

Frank McCourt34:17

Likely so I had a lovely time.

Speaker 134:26

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.