Farewell to a friend, on page and stage

When plans for the gala launching of the latest issue of The Southampton Review (TSR) were taking shape, no one suspected that Frank McCourt, to whom the issue is dedicated, would not be right there with his colleagues and students enrolled in Stony Brook Southampton’s Writers Conference, making merry in his inimitable way and celebrating himself with trademark irony and humor.

He was expected on campus this summer, as he has been every summer for almost a decade, to conduct his always over-subscribed workshop on the art of the memoir.

As recently as early July, Mr. McCourt—the former New York City schoolteacher whose memoir of childhood misery in Ireland, “Angela’s Ashes,” won him a Pulitzer Prize and made him a literary celebrity—was still planning to join fellow members of Stony Brook Southampton’s MFA program in literature and creative writing at mid-month, according to Robert Reeves, founder and director of the program and publisher of TSR.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Reeves was advised that the author, who was being treated for metastatic melanoma, had had a setback, and on Monday, the world learned of Mr. McCourt’s death in the morning newspapers.

It was a saddened group brought together by Mr. Reeves and TSR editor-in-chief Lou Ann Walker later on Monday to plan for a tribute that would now be posthumous—saddened but also looking forward to sharing their memories of a man who was as funny and engaging on the podium as on the page, an impressive presence in an impressive crowd. “We are all fairly funny here,” remarked Roger Rosenblatt, his friend, fellow faculty member and essayist, “but he was the funniest.”

Indeed, as the group discussed changes to the original TSR launch program, set for Friday, July 24, at 7:30 p.m. in the Avram theater, each suggestion of a selection from one of Mr. McCourt’s books or of a film clip showing the author in fine form, evoked memories and set off a spirited back-and-forth that put sadness aside.

“There should be music,” suggested faculty member Melissa Banks, of “The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing” fame.

“He loved Led Zeppelin,” volunteered Billy Collins, former U.S. Poet Laureate, who shared guest house lodgings with Mr. McCourt during summer teaching stints in Southampton and bonded with the author over the morning newspaper and the evening bottle of wine. Among film clips, one that showed Mr. McCourt “cracking himself up,” as Mr. Reeves put it, while reading a passage from “Angela’s Ashes,” emerged as a favorite.

“He had forgotten how funny it was,” explained Mr. Reeves.

Before the group scattered back to their teaching duties, a plan of sorts had been formed. There would be readings from Mr. McCourt’s work and from the new TSR, still images on view, an opportunity for some spontaneous tributes, and a poem or two from Mr. Collins, whose reading, which was to have been a feature of the event as originally planned, would be rescheduled. There was general agreement that the film footage should be shown at the end of the program.

“It might be hard, otherwise, to go on with the rest,” said Mr. Reeves.

Speaking after the meeting, Mr. Collins marveled at the grace with which his friend had handled his celebrity. From the life of an obscure schoolteacher, he was “suddenly thrust into a life of glamorous dinner parties. He was treated like royalty,” observed the poet, “and he wore it so easily. He was self-effacing and had a sense of the irony of the whole thing.”

For Mr. Reeves, Mr. McCourt’s winning ways were not only personally endearing, they made him a particularly valuable member of his MFA faculty.

Students lined up to register for his classes, which were sometimes fully enrolled “on the first day,” he said. “There would always be a waiting list.”

Citing students who benefited from Mr. McCourt’s extraordinary ability to inspire and instruct, he noted that the University of Massachusetts Press published Carole Gaunt’s “Hungry Hill,” which made a list of 20-best small-press books, and that Elena Gorokhova’s “A Mountain of Crumbs” is scheduled for release this fall by Simon & Schuster. There may well be a couple of celebrity memoirs that owe something to the McCourt magic as well. Both Alan Alda and Anne Bancroft are former students of Mr. McCourt.

Roger Rosenblatt, whose affecting essay on Mr. McCourt is included in the tribute issue of TSR, is the man who netted his friend for the program. It was easy, he said.

“When in 2003 we decided we were going to have a big show, something that really made a noise and did some good work,” he explained, “I called Frank. When he said yes, I called Ed Doctorow.”

After that it was John Guare, Margaret Atwood, and on and on.

“It was because I was able to say, ‘Frank is doing it,’” said Mr. Rosenblatt. “If Frank was doing it, it was an OK thing to do.”

“He was the kind of guy,” said Mr. Rosenblatt, “that when he sensed something was trustworthy and worthwhile, he would say yes. There was no ego, no ‘How is this going to reflect on me?’”

Information on tickets to Friday’s tribute to Frank McCourt can be obtained at the Stony Brook Southampton website, www.sunysb.edu/sb/southampton, or by calling the Avram Theater box office at 632-5152. Tickets will also be available at the door.