Daniel Clausen's Reviews > Angela’s Ashes
Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt, #1)
by
by
This is the second time reading this book. The first time I read this book I was a university student. It was probably summer and I was probably breezing through a large reading list of my own creation. I remember liking the book...but I also remember it killed a little bit of the joy of my summer. A book about poverty and hunger has a way of doing that.
Now, having read the book a second time as a slightly grayer adult, I can say that I like the book, but don't love it. Like other books of hardscrabble living -- think Faulkner or Steinbeck -- this book gives you an appreciation for just how good things are when you have a full belly and aren't constantly on the move looking for work. The book reminds you that there are people in the world that are constantly on the move and whose greatest concern is where they will get their next meal. A book that brings out the humanity of this situation is a gift. No one was better at this than Steinbeck in my opinion.
McCourt's memoir is heartbreaking at times, but there is also a sense of detachment in the memoir. A sense that the author himself had become a bit numb to the poverty and hunger he witnessed. To be sure, this is better than the sin of melodrama -- where things are overdramatized with overly elaborate prose. But still, I think there is a balance to be had between sparsity and the poetry of prose.
If you're a fan of sparse prose, something like this might strike you as especially poetic.
"Frost is already whitening the fresh earth on the grave and I think of Theresa cold in the coffin, the red hair, the green eyes. I can't understand the feeling going through me but I know that with all the people who died in my family and all the people who died in the lanes around me and all the people who left I never had a pain like this in my heart and I hope I never will again."
For me, though, I want to feel something more for Theresa, and I think there is more in Frankie McCourt's heart than an inability to understand and feel. Something like this: "In the frost whitened ground there is a girl I only barely knew and the things I will never know about her and all the other people who sit hungry in the lanes waiting to die, wasting away in piles of rags, their own filth, and the death of the river Shannon. The enormity of death, poverty, filth, and senselessness fills me with something...something hard, mean, and bitter. I want to lash out at some villain in the shadows, a movie villain twirling his mustache...but then I think of Theresa in the cold ground and all the things I'll never know about her and my knees buckle. I fall...and people in the lane are still hungry...and tomorrow someone else will die. The frost will fall. The ground will whiten. And there will be nothing I can do."
I don't know why I wanted to re-write that part. Perhaps it is just my way of getting to know Frank McCourt better...I want to understand...and to feel...
There are also moments of great levity where you see the innocence of youth. Again, though, there seems to be a kind of journalist's detachment of sparsity to the writing. I wouldn't be surprised if the author was a fan of Hemingway. I was a big fan too, once.
Until we meet again Frankie.
Now, having read the book a second time as a slightly grayer adult, I can say that I like the book, but don't love it. Like other books of hardscrabble living -- think Faulkner or Steinbeck -- this book gives you an appreciation for just how good things are when you have a full belly and aren't constantly on the move looking for work. The book reminds you that there are people in the world that are constantly on the move and whose greatest concern is where they will get their next meal. A book that brings out the humanity of this situation is a gift. No one was better at this than Steinbeck in my opinion.
McCourt's memoir is heartbreaking at times, but there is also a sense of detachment in the memoir. A sense that the author himself had become a bit numb to the poverty and hunger he witnessed. To be sure, this is better than the sin of melodrama -- where things are overdramatized with overly elaborate prose. But still, I think there is a balance to be had between sparsity and the poetry of prose.
If you're a fan of sparse prose, something like this might strike you as especially poetic.
"Frost is already whitening the fresh earth on the grave and I think of Theresa cold in the coffin, the red hair, the green eyes. I can't understand the feeling going through me but I know that with all the people who died in my family and all the people who died in the lanes around me and all the people who left I never had a pain like this in my heart and I hope I never will again."
For me, though, I want to feel something more for Theresa, and I think there is more in Frankie McCourt's heart than an inability to understand and feel. Something like this: "In the frost whitened ground there is a girl I only barely knew and the things I will never know about her and all the other people who sit hungry in the lanes waiting to die, wasting away in piles of rags, their own filth, and the death of the river Shannon. The enormity of death, poverty, filth, and senselessness fills me with something...something hard, mean, and bitter. I want to lash out at some villain in the shadows, a movie villain twirling his mustache...but then I think of Theresa in the cold ground and all the things I'll never know about her and my knees buckle. I fall...and people in the lane are still hungry...and tomorrow someone else will die. The frost will fall. The ground will whiten. And there will be nothing I can do."
I don't know why I wanted to re-write that part. Perhaps it is just my way of getting to know Frank McCourt better...I want to understand...and to feel...
There are also moments of great levity where you see the innocence of youth. Again, though, there seems to be a kind of journalist's detachment of sparsity to the writing. I wouldn't be surprised if the author was a fan of Hemingway. I was a big fan too, once.
Until we meet again Frankie.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
October 10, 2018
– Shelved
October 10, 2018
– Shelved as:
books-of-2018
October 10, 2018
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Finished Reading