[Rarebooks] FS: Archive of Letters from Frank McCourt to the friend who first encouraged him to publish

[Charles Agvent]

 From our Fall Catalog of 60 New Arrivals now posted on our website: 
http://www.charlesagvent.com. It contains a fine miscellany, most of 
this caliber, in a variety of fields including Literature, Presidential, 
Hand-colored Plates, Autograph Letters, Early Printing, Americana, etc. 
  We will be bringing many of these items to the Boston Book Fair, Nov. 
13-15 at the Hynes Auditorium, where we will cohabit booth 503.

McCOURT, Frank. ARCHIVE OF LETTERS: 21 pages. Superb Archive of seven 
letters from the author of ANGELA'S ASHES to R'Lene Dahlberg, fellow 
teacher at Stuyvesant, friend, husband of author Edward Dahlberg, and 
muse. Mostly chatty correspondence, all but two pages handwritten by 
McCourt, complete with hand-addressed envelopes and mostly written in 
New York City. In one letter McCourt describes being at Rockaway Beach 
with his daughter Maggie who is searching for her lost hamster with a 
friend: "The little bugger won't come out. I've tempted him with 
everything from carrots to watercress. I've made assorted seductive 
noises. I've exposed mineself. I've even promised him a night out with a 
hamsteress. To no avail. Maggie & Clare are less interested in hamsters 
than in boys. It's all boys now. Boys, boys, boys. I'll break her face. 
She checks herself out in the mirror by the hour. I told her cut it out. 
She wearing [sic] out the mirror. Also, I'm getting an education in 
teeny bop mating habits and teeny bop music. Pubescence is a pain in the 
arse." In the same letter he describes an encounter with "a maiden" who 
"had her way with me in the pitcher's mound in the local baseball field. 
She was a Catholic, too, and told me I was much better than a state of 
grace. You could always regain your state of grace, she said, but the 
way I was drinking she decided to get me while she could before I became 
a shadow of my former self. Does this make sense to you? I'll clean it 
all up in the novel I'm writing called IN THE FLESH." McCourt also 
discusses the IRA, his divorce from Alberta, his tour with his brother 
Malachi and the rave reviews they were getting, how much he likes 
Chicago, teaching, etc. In one letter he gives a list of saints. All 
letters are SIGNED "Frank," with one SIGNED "Frank, son of Angela." Also 
included is a handwritten note by R'Lene Dahlberg describing her 
relationship to McCourt which, by all accounts, seems to have cooled 
dramatically upon the publication of the Pulitzer Prize winning ANGELA'S 
ASHES. Folds from mailing. Near Fine.                  $7,500.00

McCourt admired Edward Dahlberg's superb autobiography BECAUSE I WAS 
FLESH and modeled his own ANGELA'S ASHES after it, both writers casting 
their mothers as the central characters. Both emerged from impoverished 
childhoods to achieve success, though Dahlberg's was critical rather 
than financial. Dahlberg was dead when ANGELA_S ASHES was published in 
1996, but his former wife, R'lene Dahlberg, was alive. She was the first 
person to encourage McCourt to publish his work and stated in a private 
note (included here) that she "got him his first publication- called 'If 
you live in a lane.'" Her importance to McCourt was publicly 
acknowledged by him in his book where she is listed first on the 
Acknowledgments page:

"This is a small hymn to an exhaltation of women.
R'lene Dahlberg fanned the embers."

McCourt told friends a funny tale of walking with Edward Dahlberg down 
Second Avenue.  Dahlberg was "pontificating like Jehova" and as they 
approached the Jewish funeral home where his "sainted" mother had been 
laid out, Dahlberg stepped in dog excrement.

"How can letters flourish in the commonwealth," Dahlberg immediately 
raved, "when pederasts are permitted to parade their poodles to dung on 
the pavement!"

He removed his soiled shoe and threw it in the city garbage can, 
continuing home with one shoe on and one shoe gone.

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