[Rarebooks] FS: Fine ARCHIVE OF LETTERS: 21 pages from the author of ANGELA'S ASHES

[Charles Agvent]

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 High School, friend, wife 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 [sic] wearing 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 on 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.

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.

(#015347) $7,500.00

See a sample here:

http://home.ptd.net/~chagvent/015347.JPG

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