Opinion: Frank McCourt -- ave atque vale, boyo

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Frank McCourt was an interviewer’s dream, pacing his answers perfectly, framing his anecdotes with lapidary care. On the air, the interviewer’s only risk was forgetting to watch the clock. On the printed page, you barely needed to do more than type in the quote marks. His was a storyteller’s gift, of course, and a teacher’s blessing, to be able to hold people spellbound.

You always want to think it’s genuine, and with McCourt it certainly seemed so. One of the two McCourt dinners I got to enjoy was a rollicking Library Foundation fundraising event at the home of civic philanthropist Pamela Mullin, not long after ‘’Angela’s Ashes’’ was published. I think the poor man barely had a chance to eat -- or maybe he didn’t want to, as he spun tale after tale.

In one, he waxed witty over the differences between the Irish and Irish-Americans, with special and affectionate attention to this nation’s green hoopla over St. Patrick’s Day. And he wound up with: ‘’... and if you dropped a bomb on the leaders of the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade, you’d wipe out the cream of Irish-American mediocrity.’’

For a time, at least, the outgoing message on his answering machine wound up with: ‘ ... leave your number and I will return your call with alacrity.’ Alacrity -- it’s a good word for McCourt’s pas de deux with life, his life, in all its tragedy and hilarity and passion, and how generous he was with all of it.