Frank and Malachy McCourt's New York Essays

Brian Lehrer (0:10)

Brian Lehrer on WNYC. So yeah, to close out the show today, we're going to talk about a new collection of essays with pieces by a well-known pair of Irish brothers, Irish New York brothers for a lot of their lives, Frank and Malachy McCourt. If you don't know those names, they were both newspaper columnists in New York for many years. Both of them had really distinct writing styles. They were funny. We're going to hear some humor baked in in one of the clips we play and candid, but also reflective and appropriately somber when necessary.

Frank rose to prominence. As some of you may know with his classic 1996 memoir, much celebrated Angela's Ashes about his childhood in Ireland. But he also worked for many years as a teacher at Stuyvesant and other public high schools in the city and never failed to introduce himself including on the show and his profession primarily as a teacher.

One time when he was here, I asked him, I was talking about him and you've written this book and written that book. You're a memoirist. He said, and a teacher. Even as he built a successful career as a writer, that was part of his identity. I'll mention Frank came on as a guest, Malachy is a guest and even a substitute host a couple of times. Joining me now is Tom Allen, who is the founder and publisher of Political News Outlet City & State. Why is he here for this? Because he's got a new book put together with a son, Jonah Allen, which is a collection of essays from the McCourt brothers called Says I to Myself. Tom first met Frank when they were teachers together at Stuyvesant High School. When Tom moved on to become the managing editor of the now defunct newspaper West Side Spirit, he invited Frank to write for it and they built a friendship that lasted until Frank's death, which was back in 2010

Malachy McCourt, I'll also mention, passed away just two years ago, 2024 Malachy, among other things, was a talk show host. And if you want to hear more about the McCourt brothers, well, Tom and his son Jonah are going to be speaking about the book and doing some readings at Symphony Space. Tomorrow night at 7 p.m., 95th and Broadway, you can get tickets at symphonyspace.org. And in advance of that, we're going to play a few clips and talk to Tom Allon. Thanks so much for joining us. Congratulations and thank you for putting this collection of McCourt writings together and welcome back to WNYC.

Tom Allon (2:53)

Thanks Brian, great to be here. Just one quick correction. The West Side Spirit is not defunct.

It's still coming out every week. Reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.

Brian Lehrer (3:00)

Oh, good, good, good, good. Somebody told me that it went out of business. Very glad to hear that it's still there. So I'm actually going to read a short quote from the opening essay from the book by Frank McCourt called Looking at Schools, Bars and Houses of Worship.

I won't try to do the Irish accent, but listeners, you can imagine it with a little bit of a little. He writes, this is a column. It may, depending on how I behave myself, become a regular thing. It's up to Tom Allen.

He's the managing editor. You'll see his name over there on the editorial page, if you ever wander that far. He's keeping a wary eye on this spot. I don't blame him. I can see him already hacking away at my parentheses, and that's a pity. I don't want to alienate the managing editor on my first outing. He'll want to know the point of all this. So Tom, not only do you get the name drop there, it's hilarious in its way, right?

Tom Allon (4:01)

Frank was always a lot of fun, and this column was such a great column. When he first asked me if he could do it, we were sitting in the lion's head on Christopher Street in the late 80s, and we saw Pete Hamill standing at the bar. Frank was always jealous of Pete Hamill at the Daily News and Jimmy Breslin, and he looked at me and goes, you know, I've always wanted to be a columnist. I said, really, what would you write about? He said, schools, pubs, churches, synagogues. You know, he said, they're the three most important institutions in society, and nobody ever writes about them unless there's a scandal.

And that was really the genesis of this column called Forays, and it was so much fun to edit.

Brian Lehrer (4:40)

So that was kind of sarcastic, Frank McCourt. I'm going to play a clip from the show, which was mostly earnest, Frank McCourt, and he could be extremely earnest. And you know, you wrote a book, but since this is radio, we have the luxury of playing audio of the people that you're honoring in print. And we can hear from the clips we're going to play how different they were in their styles. Frank had that wry sense of humor, but he was very earnest. Malachy was a card and often a clown, but you know, in a meaningful, provocative way. And a record tour.