Teacher Man: A Memoir
by Frank McCourt
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Book Summary Information
Author: Frank McCourtEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-11-15
ISBN: 0743243773
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Scribner
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Book Reviews of Teacher Man: A Memoir
Book Review: Almost As Good As "Angela's Ashes"
Summary: 5 Stars
McCourties of the world rejoice! You have nothing to lose but your tears of woe anticipating when he'd return with his next book; the foremost memoirist of our time is back. Frank McCourt's "Teacher Man" is a spellbinding lyrical ode to the craft of teaching. It is a rollicking, delightful trek across nearly thirty years in New York City public school classrooms that will surely please his devout legion of fans, and perhaps win some new admirers too. Truly, without question, it is a splendid concluding volume in his trilogy of memoirs that began in spectacular fashion with "Angela's Ashes". Indeed, we find much of the same plain, yet rather poetic, prose and rich dark humor that defines his first book, along with his undiminished, seemingly timeless, skill as a mesmerizing raconteur. Is McCourt truly now one of the great writers of our time if he isn't already, with the publication of "Teacher Man"? I will say only that he was a marvellous teacher (I still feel lucky to have been a prize-winning student of his.), and that this new memoir truly captures the spirit of what it was like to be a student in his classroom.
"Teacher Man" opens with a hilarious Prologue that would seem quite self-serving if written by someone other than Frank McCourt, in which he reviews his star-struck existence in the nine years since the original publication of "Angela's Ashes". In Part I (It's a Long Road to Pedagogy) he dwells on the eight years he spent at McKee Vocational High School in Staten Island. It starts, promisingly enough, with him on the verge of ending his teaching career, just as it begins in the lawless Wild West frontier of a McKee classroom (I was nearly in stitches laughing out loud, after learning why he was nearly fired on two consecutive days, no less.). Frank manages to break every rule learned in his Education courses at New York University, but he succeeds in motivating his students, raising the craft of excuse note writing to a high literary art. He finds time too to fall in love with his first wife, Alberta Small, and then earn a M. A. degree in English from Brooklyn College.
Part II (Donkey on a Thistle) has the funniest tale; an unbelievable odyssey to a Times Square movie theater with Frank as chaperone to an unruly tribe of thirty Seward Park High School girls. But before we get there, we're treated to a spellbinding account of his all too brief time as an adjunct lecturer of English at Brooklyn's New York Community College, and of another short stint at Fashion Industries High School, where he receives a surprising, and poignant, reminder from his past. Soon Frank will forsake high school teaching, sail off to Dublin, and enroll in a doctoral program at Trinity College, in pursuit of a thesis on Irish-American literature. But, that too fails, and with Alberta pregnant, he accepts an offer to become a substitute teacher at prestigious Stuyvesant High School (The nation's oldest high school devoted to the sciences and mathematics; its alumni now include four Nobel Prize laureates in chemistry, medicine and economics; for more information please look at my ABOUT ME section, or at history at www.stuy.edu or famous alumni at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School or Notables at www.ourstrongband.org.).
Surprisingly, Part III (Coming Alive in Room 205) is the shortest section of "Teacher Man". After having spent fifteen years teaching at Stuyvesant High School, you'd think that this would be this memoir's longest section, replete with many tales rich in mirth (Room 205, located a few doors from the principal's office, was Frank's room throughout his years teaching full-time at Stuyvesant High School.). Indeed I'm surprised that it is so brief. Yet there is still ample fodder for Frank's lyrical prose to dwell on, most notably a hilarious episode on cookbooks and how he taught his creative writing class to write recipes for them. He describes with equal doses of hilarity and eloquence, his unique style of teaching at Stuyvesant, which he compares and contrasts with math teachers Philip Fisher and Edward Marcantonio - the dark and good sides of Stuyvesant mathematics education in the 1970s and 1980s (I was a student of both and will let the reader decide who was my teacher while I was a student in Frank's creative writing class.) - but he still implies that his students were having the most fun.
Will "Teacher Man" earn the same critical acclaim bestowed upon "Angela's Ashes"? Who knows? Is it deserving of it? I think the answer is a resounding yes. Regardless, Frank's many devout fans - his flock of McCourties - will cherish this book as yet another inspirational tale from the foremost memoirist of our time.
(EDITORIAL NOTE 7/22/09: Elsewhere online I posted this tribute to my favorite high school teacher, and I think it is worth noting here:
I've been fortunate to have had many fine teachers in high school, college and graduate school, but there was no one like Frank McCourt. Without a doubt, he was the most inspirational, most compelling, and the funniest, teacher I ever had. I am still grateful to him for instilling in me a life-long love of literature and a keen interest in writing prose. Am still amazed that he encouraged me to enter a citywide essay contest on New York City's waterfront, and would, more than a year later, in my senior yearbook acknowledge my second prize award by thanking me for winning him money (His was also, not surprisingly, the most eloquent set of comments I had inscribed in my yearbook from teachers.). He is gone now, but I am sure that for me, and for many of my fellow alumni of his Stuyvesant High School classes, he will live in our hearts and minds for the rest of our lives.)
Summary of Teacher Man: A Memoir
Nearly a decade ago Frank McCourt became an unlikely star when, at the age of sixty-six, he burst onto the literary scene with Angela's Ashes, the Pulitzer Prize -- winning memoir of his childhood in Limerick, Ireland. Then came 'Tis, his glorious account of his early years in New York.Now, here at last, is McCourt's long-awaited book about how his thirty-year teaching career shaped his second act as a writer. Teacher Man is also an urgent tribute to teachers everywhere. In bold and spirited prose featuring his irreverent wit and heartbreaking honesty, McCourt records the trials, triumphs and surprises he faces in public high schools around New York City. His methods anything but conventional, McCourt creates a lasting impact on his students through imaginative assignments (he instructs one class to write "An Excuse Note from Adam or Eve to God"), singalongs (featuring recipe ingredients as lyrics), and field trips (imagine taking twenty-nine rowdy girls to a movie in Times Square!).
McCourt struggles to find his way in the classroom and spends his evenings drinking with writers and dreaming of one day putting his own story to paper. Teacher Man shows McCourt developing his unparalleled ability to tell a great story as, five days a week, five periods per day, he works to gain the attention and respect of unruly, hormonally charged or indifferent adolescents. McCourt's rocky marriage, his failed attempt to get a Ph.D. at Trinity College, Dublin, and his repeated firings due to his propensity to talk back to his superiors ironically lead him to New York's most prestigious school, Stuyvesant High School, where he finally finds a place and a voice. "Doggedness," he says, is "not as glamorous as ambition or talent or intellect or charm, but still the one thing that got me through the days and nights."
For McCourt, storytelling itself is the source of salvation, and in Teacher Man the journey to redemption -- and literary fame -- is an exhilarating adventure.
For 30 years Frank McCourt taught high school English in New York City and for much of that time he considered himself a fraud. During these years he danced a delicate jig between engaging the students, satisfying often bewildered administrators and parents, and actually enjoying his job. He tried to present a consistent image of composure and self-confidence, yet he regularly felt insecure, inadequate, and unfocused. After much trial and error, he eventually discovered what was in front of him (or rather, behind him) all along--his own experience. "My life saved my life," he writes. "My students didn't know there was a man up there escaping a cocoon of Irish history and Catholicism, leaving bits of that cocoon everywhere." At the beginning of his career it had never occurred to him that his own dismal upbringing in the slums of Limerick could be turned into a valuable lesson plan. Indeed, his formal training emphasized the opposite. Principals and department heads lectured him to never share anything personal. He was instructed to arouse fear and awe, to be stern, to be impossible to please--but he couldn't do it. McCourt was too likable, too interested in the students' lives, and too willing to reveal himself for their benefit as well as his own. He was a kindred spirit with more questions than answers: "Look at me: wandering late bloomer, floundering old fart, discovering in my forties what my students knew in their teens."
As he did so adroitly in his previous memoirs, Angela's Ashes and 'Tis, McCourt manages to uncover humor in nearly everything. He writes about hilarious misfires, as when he suggested (during his teacher's exam) that the students write a suicide note, as well as unorthodox assignments that turned into epiphanies for both teacher and students. A dazzling writer with a unique and compelling voice, McCourt describes the dignity and difficulties of a largely thankless profession with incisive, self-deprecating wit and uncommon perception. It may have taken him three decades to figure out how to be an effective teacher, but he ultimately saved his most valuable lesson for himself: how to be his own man. --Shawn Carkonen
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