A conversation with Malachy McCourt

Young Chang

It’s barely 9 a.m. on a Monday, and already I’ve gotten behind in my

day.

So when Malachy McCourt asks me how I am, I tell him exactly that.

That I’m stressing because I’m playing catch up, even though the week has

only just begun.

And how’re you, I ask.

“Any day above ground is a good one,” he says.

Then McCourt, brother to Frank McCourt, gives me advice. He tells me

to take an “extremely good and deep breath” because in times of stress,

we forget to breathe.

“Breathe out all the stress,” he continues. “Sit back. The past can’t

be changed. And the future -- it’s not here yet because God hasn’t even

created it, so concentrate on now.”

Some little babies never get to take many deep breaths, the

best-selling author says. We all take a first breath when we’re born. We

get a last exhale when we die.

“All else between them are bonuses,” McCourt finishes.

I decide to believe him. We’ve never met -- this is all over the phone

-- -- but I trust the 70-year-old writer knows what he’s saying.

If anyone’s gone up against yesterday’s demons, it’s McCourt. If

anyone ever had to contemplate dying by the bottle, it’s this Irish

native who knows firsthand the power of a bar stool. And if anyone’s

going to make me believe the here-and-now is really all that matters,

it’s this father of five and grandfather of three who had guts enough to

lay his demons out on the table between the jackets of a memoir titled

“Singing My Him Song.”

McCourt will present a reading from his book at the Newport Beach

Central Library on Monday.

“It doesn’t have any specific meaning except that my wife, Diana,

suggested to me I put the word ‘singing’ in there,” McCourt said of the

title. “Not that I’m a singer. But I go around singing a lot.”

His train of wondering went something like this: What do I sing about?

I’m singing my song. What’s my song about? It’s about him. I’m singing my

him song.

At times, the song -- the book -- is sad, telling about depression and

a life dizzied by drugs and alcohol. He writes about being on welfare

after having been a star actor and how the scars given by his parents

took awhile to fall off.

“He’s very open about his struggles,” said LaDonna Kienitz, city

librarian and a fan of the book. “He doesn’t make excuses for himself,

and it’s also very inspiring.”

At times, the song is triumphant, with verses about sobering up,

fixing the broken parts in his marriage and learning to say “I love you”

without the fear of mockery in return.

As written in “Singing,” a much younger McCourt told his mother,

Angela, one day that he loved her. She reacted as if to a “slap” and then

laughed.

“That was really hurtful,” McCourt said. “Because the Irish don’t say

things like that -- we’re very indirect -- for me to say that was almost

a contradiction of Irish-talk traditions. It took me a long time before I

could say it again.”

Today, he tells his children he loves them every time they talk. He

tells his wife the same thing every single day.

“I don’t say it easily, I mean it,” McCourt said.

He was led to pen his memories on paper when brother Frank McCourt’s

“Angela’s Ashes” caught the attention of the world.

“There was a huge recognition of that, and there was a sudden interest

in the doings of the McCourt family,” said the New York resident.

“Somebody said to me, ‘You must have a book in you.”’

So he wrote a first -- “A Monk Swimming” -- which became a New York

Times bestseller in the late ‘90s, and then followed it with “Singing My

Him Song.”

Sober for 16 years and having defeated a battle with prostate cancer,

McCourt passes time in what he considers a “resilient” city, nowadays

writing a new book about the history of the song “Danny Boy.”

I ask him if he and his brother ever help each other write orread each

other’s rougher drafts.

“I always tell people, ‘don’t show your stuff to your relatives,

ever,”’ McCourt said. “Because it’s automatic censorship, especially if

it’s a memoir about the family.”

He also doesn’t consider himself qualified to pass judgment on other

people’s writing.

“I left school when I was 13,” McCourt said. “I don’t know anything

about the construction of grammar, sequence. . . . All I know is that I’m

a storyteller.”

But before we hang up, and though I haven’t told him anything about

future hopes to maybe write a book myself, he feels compelled to remind

me about breathing.

A good, long breath, he repeats.

“And write a book,” he says, startling me. “And don’t show it to the

family.”

FYI

* WHAT: Malachy McCourt reads from his book and signs

* WHEN: 7 p.m. Monday

* WHERE: Newport Beach Central Library’s Friends Meeting Room, 1000

Avocado Ave., Newport Beach

* COST: Free

* CALL: (949) 717-3801