Chris Bord June 30, 2014 Books

Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt (1996)

I downloaded the audiobook of Frank McCourt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Angela’s Ashes on 5/27/2002. It has taken me until now to listen to it, probably for the same reason so many people I’ve asked haven’t read it: “I hear it’s great, but isn’t it also depressing as hell?” Yes, and it is a pitch-black comedy and a life-affirming indictment of (and love letter to) the feckin’ Catholic Church.

Angela’s Ashes is hard to begin, and its greatness doesn’t become apparent until more than halfway through. I’ve been listening as I run, which is how I consume most audiobooks. It has slowed me down, and more than once I’ve considered abandoning the story and deleting it forever. Now I’m certain I will return to this story again – I want to start over from the beginning.

Frank McCourt narrates his own memoir, which might be essential to understanding this book. His Irish brogue is revelatory, if only because it reminds the reader (listener) that he did, in fact, survive the events he recounts. It’s difficult to comprehend the poverty McCourt’s family endures, and the derision of those who resent the millstone of the poor around the necks of hardworking, non-freeloading society.

The moment my opinion changed: McCourt’s recounting of his First Communion. He’d been looking forward to the event, because he could wear a suit and make “the collection” around the neighborhood (the neighbors would give him money for his milestone.) Unfortunately, McCourt’s grandmother fed him a grand breakfast after church which upset his stomach (he wasn’t used to so much food) and he threw up in her backyard. She brought him to the church for confession:

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been 48 hours since my last confession.”

“My son, what can you have done in this amount of time?”

“Father, I threw up God all over my grandmother’s backyard.”

The priest can’t answer for laughing, which McCourt communicates from both the child’s understanding and the adult’s perspective.

“Wash it away with some water and say a Hail Mary, my child.”

McCourt exits the confessional and his grandmother asks what the priest said.

“He said to wash it with some water.”

“What kind of water, holy water or regular water?”

“I don’t know, he didn’t say.”

“Well go find out!”

So McCourt returns to the confessional: “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been two minutes since my last confession…”

Miraculously, McCourt finds the balance between outrage at the sins of the Church and wonder at those who live its precepts despite every reason not to. He is also fearless in describing the sexual awakening of a teenaged boy, with its constant temptation, guilt, and occasional release. If there is any grace in this story, it’s in the understanding of universal struggles and perseverance, with constant allowance for humor. We’d cry except for laughing so hard.

Angela’s Ashes is more relevant than ever in a world where Government enshrines the right of religion to discriminate against the poor. That is harsh, but it’s the reality we live in. I hated this book, and then I loved it.

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1

Joe Caruso on June 30, 2014 at 5:51 pm
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Enjoyed your review, Chris, as always. I, too, haven’t finished the book, this many years. And yet, memories of McCourt’s vivid descriptions return with the very mention of his name, like his family’s reference to the upper floor of their house as “Venice,” whenever the nearby stream would flood its banks and invade the first floor…(I think I have that right…)
Your reference to young Frank’s getting sick on his Firs Communion morning from the rare good meal he could enjoy reminded me of a chapter in the Swedish author Moberg’s book, The Emigrants, in which a young child sneaks a bowl of the porridge made for his new sibling’s baptism, and dies, it is suggested, from food too rich for his emaciated self.
Moving on: at the risk of blending media (this blog entry and earlier Facebook comments) – I think you’ve already done that, actually – I must comment on your closing remarks above about “…a world where Government enshrines the right of religion to discriminate against the poor”, a comment which made me cringe.
The obvious reference is to today’s Supreme Court decision upholding the rights of a family business to not pay for certain contraception expenses of their employees, on grounds of the religious convictions of the family that owns the business. I think your comparison here, and separate remarks on today’s SCOTUS decision, are harsh, but apparently you’re in good company; to date, nobody I’ve read (on Facebook, certainly), it seems, dare point out the leap of illogic that condemns the company Hobby Lobby (HL) for imposing their religion on their employees – when, as I read it, they haven’t told their employees what they should or shouldn’t do – the HL family is just not going to pay for something for their employees that they don’t believe in themselves.
One could see these kinds of clashes coming, when what passes for National Health Care is really just a national requirement to purchase health care (and offering subsidies to those in the middle who can’t afford it), thus keeping the insurance companies happy; it would have been so much simpler if we were all assessed, through taxation, perhaps, an amount to fund a “single payer” system (like Medicaid, maybe??) – but I digress.
I think that governments throughout time, in this country and before us, have done what you charge above (“…enshrines the right of religion to discriminate against the poor.” ), but I do not think that’s what’s happening here. And yet, I’m not here to praise our government, or to bury it; I’m in the awfully sad position of being disappointed at the way in which our government has chosen to respond to the need for universal health care, but also believing (for the moment) that we’re better off, healthcare-wise, than we were before January 1, 2014.
I’ve read that HL has not contested providing general health care benefits to its 16,000 employees – rather, it has just contested providing certain contraceptive benefits (and not all contraceptive benefits, I understand – just the ones considered “abortifacients”, or abortion-causing).
Do you have any idea how many companies have decided, in the face of the Affordable Care Act, to no longer pay any health care benefits to their employees, and instead direct the employees to individual ACA plans? (I can’t tell you how many, but I’ve read several articles on this problem since the first of the year).
I concede that this court decision may open up a Pandora’s box of other opting out considerations on legal ethical grounds – companies owned by families who don’t believe in vaccines, or transfusions, perhaps – but I’ll wait and see if that happens, and I’m judging the HL case on its own (I’ll say it) merit. Or until the method of providing universal health care matures – and we have a wait for that.
My comments aren’t about whether contraception is good or not good; it’s about understanding the position of a family-owned company that doesn’t want to pay for something for its employees that they believe is wrong, and feel that by paying for it, they’re an accessory to the act. Now, if the company fired or wouldn’t hire someone because that someone used contraceptives, or is gay, or practices anything that the family/family’s church doesn’t believe in, I would condemn that. But as it stands, we’re talking about a family that owns a company, wants to pay for their employees’ health care, minus certain contraceptive benefits. If I were lucky enough to work for a company that paid (most of) my health care benefits, I’d be thankful and find a way to pay for what wasn’t covered.
Thanks for letting me have my say.
2

Joe Caruso on June 30, 2014 at 7:14 pm
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Postscript:
Re: the Supreme Court case: In an articled posted today by Emma Green in The Atlantic Online: “…nobody gets to be “right” in this case. No one’s religious beliefs can trample someone else’s health needs, and even if the government can’t force closely held private companies to pay for contraceptives, these companies can’t stop their employees from being on birth control. Hobby Lobby is a balancing act, not a bludgeon—and certainly not an attack on women’s rights”. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/06/hobby-lobby-isnt-waging-a-war-on-women/373717/
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Chris Bord on June 30, 2014 at 10:14 pm
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Joe – As always, thank you for your comments. I think I disagree with you on some, and agree on many others. Our fundamental difference seems to be what constitutes a violation of religious freedom. I’m with you that the present healthcare system is less than ideal, and better than what went before it. But carving out exemptions based on the payer’s conscience is a slippery slope. Can the company also tell me how to spend my mandated minimum wage? In this country, religion is so often assumed to be Christianity; what about the conscience of non-majority religions?

Back to McCourt’s book. I thought 80% of the book was a fierce indictment of a religious paradigm that kept the poor in their place, and offered little in the way of real help or compassion. The exceptions, minor as they are, are breathtaking when they do come.

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