Books
The McCourts: Down Memoir Lane
The Brothers McCourt Come to Bearsville
Frank, Malachy, and Alphie McCourt in Malachy’s Manhattan apartment.
There’s a little-known tunnel that goes straight from the Upper West Side to Woodstock,” says Alphie McCourt. Angela Sheehan McCourt’s youngest son has just published a memoir, A Long Stone’s Throw. You might say it’s a family tradition: His brother Malachy has two bestsellers under his belt (A Monk Swimming and Singing My Him Song), and big brother Frank is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela’s Ashes, ’Tis, and Teacher Man.
All three are slated to appear at the Bearsville Theater on February 15 during the Woodstock Memoir Festival. They’ve agreed to an interview at Rosie O’Grady’s, a congenial eatery near Times Square where the McCourts and an amalgamation of friends meet for monthly lunches, a tradition that started in 1973. Though the core group is 20 or so, the moveable feast “swelled to bursting on the heels of Frank’s books,” reports Alphie. Visiting literati included William Kennedy, Pete Hamill, Mary Gordon, Thomas Keneally, and others; one regular called it “stargazing.”
Alphie and his wife had a weekend place in Woodstock during the 1980s. “We’d start to feel better as soon as we crossed the bridge,” he recalls. Malachy’s also lived locally—he wrote A Monk Swimming in Krumville. Frank splits his time between Manhattan and Connecticut.
The door swings open, and in blows the force of nature that calls itself Malachy McCourt. The actor, author, Green Party gubernatorial candidate, and “larger-than-life of the party” is nursing a head cold. “I’m renting myself out to insomniacs,” he declares. “I’ll give you the full details of my cold, and either I’ll bore you to death or put you to sleep. Either way, I’ll collect a check.”
“Malachy can turn the world on its ear with a phrase,” Alphie observed before his arrival; one senses such praise would be met with derision. At the book launch for Singing My Him Song, Alphie introduced his brother. “When the McCourts are around, everyone expects fun, fun, fun, every minute. I thought, for once let’s not do it that way.” He spoke at length about Malachy’s kindness, how he took care of friends who were sick or in need. When the author got up, he said, “Thank you, Alphie, for that eulogy.”
Reverence will get you nowhere. Ask Malachy how he writes, and he says, “On my arse.” He elaborates: “I’m always looking, when I go to readings, for a magic formula that will allow me to write without writing.”
“You could try talking,” Alphie says, dryly.
“People say, just talk into a microphone.” Malachy shudders. “I can’t. I need the pen in my hand, that symbiotic relationship.”
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