Limerick Leader Oct. 3rd 1998

AGAIN and again Pulitzer prizewinner Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes, returns to Limerick in triumph. He is celebrated in literary circles, honoured in the Groves of Academe, lionised in the business community. And rightly so: he is a genius and his book, for all its flaws, is something of a masterpiece.

The lad from the lanes has finally made it in Limerick--so much so, indeed, that he has now become an Establishment figure.

He unwittingly underlined the point at a recent luncheon when he remarked that help was available for his Limerick critics. He was joking of course. Perhaps it's time he got serious.

His Limerick critics are, in the main, survivors of those self-same lanes, elderly citizens of humble but frequently happy origins who stayed at home to build a better Limerick for themselves and their families. We, their heirs, are forever in their debt.

Their childhood memories are not those of the bould Frank: they might be right, they might be wrong but they are surely entitled to be taken seriously.

Frank's membership of the Establishment, however, is evidenced less by his peremptory dismissal of his Limerick critics than by his failure to extend his indignation at the injustices of the Thirties, Forties and Fifties to those of the Nineties. The lanes are long since demolished, thank God, but in a sense they still exist in the disadvantaged housing estates. It is easy to rail at the civic and clerical ogres of the past; difficult to confront the powerful vested interests responsible for the socio-economic apartheid of the present.

Old Frank could, if he so chose, be a uniquely influential champion of the Young McCourts of today--the kids born and reared in poverty, exposed to crime, excluded from the best schools and denied jobs on the basis of their address. Or is help available for them, too.