“How I became a teacher at all and remained one is a miracle and I have to give myself full marks for surviving all those years in the classrooms of New York. There should be a medal for people who survive miserable childhoods and become teachers, and I should be first in line for the medal and whatever bars might be appended for ensuing miseries.”
- excerpt from the Prologue “Teacher Man”
This is the third McCourt book I’ve read and it often amazed me how his life is filled with irony. The fact that he can write well plus the witty stuffs is a positive addition to the story. Many would say that it’s not as hillarious as “Angela’s Ashes” or “Tis” but I’ve never considered McCourt as a writer of tragedy-comedy (that explains the four stars). His life is our life and he writes about its mundaness.
This time, far from being in the frontline of poverty in “Angela’s Ashes” or the growing adulthood of “Tis”, McCourt narrates his 30 years of teaching public school kids in New York. Or did he actually teach his students? Since he is often at a loss when it comes to teaching, he would talk about his miserable childhood to his 12-year old students instead of teaching them English literature as required in his profession. There have also been several occasions where he got the boot because the children’s parents complain to the school principal about him telling their innocent children depressing childhood stories. Otherwise, it’d be his unique teaching technics such as telling his students to recite food recipes as if it’s a poem or using a pen as a metaphor for constructing proper sentence structures.
Of the thousands of students that he’s taught, it gives him the whole meaning of life. Or rather, the whole meaning of dealing with life’s problems knowing very well there are no solutions to it. In this memoir, McCourt sees his life revolving around his students’ lives — students with family problems, students with don’t-care attitudes, students who think teachers are there to torture their lives, students who have problems with their self-esteem, multiracial students with multiracial issues, etc.
I like this book not for the same reasons I’ve enjoyed his other two memoirs. This one’s mild and a tinge of philosophy is injected in the story but without any pretense. The only thing I don’t understand about McCourt is that although he considers himself as repulsive (esp. with the red eyes and such physical abnormalities), possessing a terribly low self-confidence, doesn’t consider himself intelligent, and what-noughts, he still gets the gorgeous women! How’s that possible?
If you’ve read “Angela’s Ashes” and “Tis”, you should get this one too!
Too bad I found out eventually.. That’s okay. I think they did mention something about donating it to some people who were in dire need of food aid. Coz seriously, 2 kgs of rendang babi is really a lot to take what more with the artery-clogging effect with all the fat..Glad ’twas not put to waste.. err.. Hope you are taking your anti-clogging pills regularly..
Gustri: Oh, were they not supposed to dump it at my place? No wonder they told me “It’s really nice but we can’t finish it. Just don’t tell her we’re giving it to you.” Or something along that line.
oh?…what rendang babi?..guess i have to retrieve from my limited memory of the rendang babi party..so they finally found a place a dumb the leftovers eh?..sure.. shall work on it and it’ll find it’s way to you some day..cheers
Yes, I think I still have the ‘recipe’ but I want to trade it with your recipe of kari babi (or was it rendang babi…the one that you cooked for Will and U-Wen but they couldn’t finish it bah).
Rubbish bin?!.. hhm.. yeah… amazingly you found the grace of the light by buying ‘em spirits. okaylah.. err.. you happen to have a recipe for tuak? i’m not as smart as you so wanna try my luck and hope i don’t go blind in the process.. ;P
Gustri: I did brew my own tuak some years back and had bad a stomach ache after drinking it. My cousin told me that’s because I brewed it in a rubbish bin (which I’ve cleaned thoroughly). After that, I thought why do I bother going through all the troubles and nitty-gritty of pantang to brew my own tuak when I can just buy them cheaply? It was then I discovered that I was smart after all…wow.
hey.. don’t ‘pray-pray’… you’ll be surprised by where spirits can be found living.. this is coming from someone who sorta believes in some force but not this force called GOD that is being captured in some books that the authors claim as being holy..
yeah, i know what you mean. books are bloody expensive (and so are bottled spirits). but the way i see it, i’m spending money for books based on the allocated amount for tax rebate so i do not have to give my hard-earned money to the ‘gomen’.. heck, they’ve taken lots of my money for nothing..
i hear ya mate.. your divine bottled spirits provide more pleasure and more divine experience that you end up speaking in tongues ;-) ever thought of brewing your own spirits so you don’t have to give the gomen so much for the tax?
Gustri: I never knew books have spirits living in them, let alone calling out to me in the bookstore. I usually check my wallet first before I decide to buy a book. A difficult decision: A book = RM35+ OR a jug of bir = RM25+
hhm…for a person who constantly live below the poverty line, I would naturally choose a jug of bir. :-)
Yeah..I must say Frank has a way of writing. I was crying (can’t help it man) and laughing at the same time..I stumbled upon Ashes in a bookshop one day and just felt drawn into it. You know how sometimes you just get drawn into a book like the spirits of the book is calling you (and in your case, a different kind of spirits in the form of liquid calling you from a bottle or a jug). that’s how I usually find my way through a bookshop. ‘Twas the same way I found Malachy in a second hand bookshop. cheers
Gustri: My uncle gave me my first Angela’s Ashes in the late ’90s and told me that I will like it. Unconvinced, I asked my uncle “I didn’t know you read?” He told me to just bloody read it and said: “It will remind you of our own Limerick in 1990, when we had to eat unripe papaya because we hadn’t eaten for almost two days!”
But Ashes turned out to be one of the funniest books I’ve ever read!
I’ve not read Malachy’s “A Monk Swimming” although I’ve seen it perched on a bookshelf in one of the bookstores some years ago.
you know, reading your blog, you really remind me of Frank McCourt, whose 3 books i’ve read. strangely enough you read him too. you should also try “A Swimming Monk” by Malachy McCourt, his brother. very colorful language (the Irish version of yours) and hilarious. cheers
Demented: I have not watched the movie but the book’s damn funny! Probably you’re right about the book-into-movie thing, sometimes it does no justice to the book. But there are two movies I’ve watched that are as good as the book: Silence of the Lambs and High Fidelity (the two characters in the music store is funnier than the ones in the book).
i read angelas ashes and this one is definitely a must read. they even made a movie out of it which i watched and was isappointed. The trouble with making a movie out of a good book is that no matter how good and true to the book it is, it will usually be a screw up. hollywood should stick to doing spiderman and shit.