In the Garden

Frank McCourt earned international fame—and a Pulitzer Prize—after Angela’s Ashes , his memoir about what he termed “the miserable Irish Catholic childhood,” was published in 1996. His second book, ’Tis , about his life as a young man in New York City, followed, cementing his reputation as an important literary voice that meshes pathos with self-lacerating humor.

But long before McCourt became a notable author, he was an educator. His new book, Teacher Man (Scribner), chronicles the more than 30 years he spent teaching English at four public high schools in New York City. The book makes clear that he was anything but a natural. For his first job, at a vocational high school, he did little more than tell stories about growing up in impoverished Limerick, Ireland. Only much later, at the widely acclaimed Stuyvesant High School, did he discover that the key to teaching is, as he says, “going to where they [are] in their adolescence.”

Reached by phone at his home in New York City, McCourt greeted the interviewer with “You’re my people”—in other words, a fellow teacher. He spoke about his early difficulties, how Shakespeare helped turn around his teaching career, and the joys and sorrows of the job.