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If you ever wondered what your high school English teacher was thinking as he looked into your vacant, daydreaming eyes, read Teacher Man and you’ll know.
Frank McCourt was born in the U.S., spent a miserable childhood in Ireland, and immigrated back to America as a teenager. There he spent time in the Army, on the docks, and as a student. These were the subjects of his first two memoirs, Angela’s Ashes, and T’is.
In Teacher Man, young Frank is done with manual labor and study. He’s arrived at his first high school, ready to teach a class of unruly teenagers. He would spend the next thirty years toiling in the New York City schools, learning his trade, finding what worked, and amassing an enormous number of stories about his students and himself.
McCourt uses an easy, conversational style that satisfies yet leaves you wanting more. One thing: he refuses to use quotation marks; this is disconcerting at first, then matters less and less as you go. A fun and enlightening read, I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I did his first two books.
Teacher Man ends on a hopeful note, one that foretells his Pulitzer Prize-winning future. I would guess that his next book will be titled Author Man.
