How I Stalked Frank McCourt

By Jeff Nichols

In 1995, my goal was simple: to become the toast of the New York literary town. So I began to scribble down my autobiography. I thought I had an interesting story about being confined to special education, the obligatory drug  and alcohol abuse and then going on to live a life full of “fish out of water” situations.

I rushed the first draft and sent it off to some literary agents. One guy told a friend of mine that the book was so bad it should be renamed “My life as an Idoit.” I loved it, and immediately added it as a subtitle to my book.

Oblivious, I felt that if I could get a forward or blurb from a famous writer or media personality, it would help me get in the door with some publishers. I had met Molly Jong-Fast at a party in Manhattan. Molly was/is a writer and a Manhattan socialite who was friends with many writers. More importantly, Molly’s mother, Erica Jong, was one of the pioneers of women’s literature in America.

When Molly said she would be glad to “look at it,” I started dumping heaps of typo-ridden manuscripts off with her doorman. Then I would call to see if she had read it; I always got the answering machine: “Hi, Molly, Jeff Nichols here. Look, I don’t know if you picked up my manuscript yet with your doorman, but if you have read up to page 130, don’t read anymore. I changed pages 135 to 155, beefed it up a little. Anyway, I have dropped those revised chapters off with your doorman, hope I caught you in time.” Eventually I realized Molly was not going to read my horrific book.
But my ace in the hole was a Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of one of the bestselling books of all time: Angela’s Ashes. This would be tricky because my connection to Frank McCourt—my stepfather—could also be my obstacle. I sank my stepfather’s large fishing boat and accidently burnt his house down to the ground, among other injustices. A decent guy with a big heart, he handled it better than anyone would.

My mother, always the insufferable cheerleader, must have wrestled Frank’s number from my stepfather, and I got the old “I’ll have a look at it” from Frank.

I began to stalk Frank the same way some creep would stalk Pamela Anderson. I did everything but rifle through Frank’s garbage. Time passed. I found out that a golf club in the Hamptons was having a tournament in Frank’s honor. I caught him right before he teed off. Throwing caution to the wind, I walked up and said, “Frank, I am Jeff Nichols, Cynthia Nichols’ son.”

In his wonderful brogue, he looked up at me and said, “Oh, I know who you are, and let me tell ya, I am not writing any (expletive) forward for you book!”

Horrified that I had upset this wonderful man, I stepped back in genuine concern and horror.

“Oh no, you don’t have to. I am a big fan, no problem,” I said.

Then Frank, possibly picking up on my earnestness and latent empathy added, “But I might give you a burb.”

Two years later, Jeff’s book was made into a major movie. His book, Trainwreck: My Life as an Idoit, was published by Simon and Schuster with Frank’s blurb on the front cover. For more information, visit www.jeff-nichols.com.

McCourt High School Recruiting Students

With Frank McCourt High School slated to open in September, administrators are starting the recruiting and application phase to assemble the first class of freshmen.

The high school, housed on the Brandeis High School campus at 145 W. 84th St. between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues, will be open to students in all five boroughs. Named after the late Pulitzer Prize-winning author who spent 29 years as a teacher, the new school will focus on communications and civic engagement. Read more

Top Stories of 2009

As 2009 draws to a close, we thought we’d paw through our archives to dig up some of the more interesting stories that we covered during the past 12 months. From swine flu to Lincoln Center renovations and unexpected Hudson River air activity, there was rarely a dull moment in Manhattan, especially on the West Side. Below are our highlights, in no particular order. Read more

Founding Principal

Danielle Salzberg, a veteran teacher, administrator and builder of new schools, will be taking the helm at the newly announced Frank McCourt High School next fall. The application process for new schools occurs in February, after both the specialized high school round and the main round of citywide high school admissions are over. Students who are interested in one of the city’s new schools, like Frank McCourt, can fill out a special application during this final part of the process.
Read more

Skeptical of New School

To the Editor:
As a former prize-winning student of Frank McCourt’s, I greeted Joel Klein’s announcement of the Frank McCourt High School with much skepticism and disbelief. I strongly doubt that such a school can produce first-rate journalists. Instead, I think those interested in journalism should seek mastery first of some subject, whether it is fine art, history or science, for example, before trying to write eloquently about it. Read more

Finally: McCourt HS

Before literary legend and longtime New York City public school teacher Frank McCourt died this past summer, efforts were underway to create a school in his honor. Now that plan has become a reality. On Oct. 6, the Department of Education announced that the Frank McCourt High School will open in fall 2010 as part of the Brandeis campus, on West 84th Street.

The small, selective school will eventually serve 432 students when all high school grades are added during the 2013-14 school year. McCourt was best known as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of  Angela’s Ashes, but he also taught for 29 years, mostly at Stuyvesant High School. Read more

Frank McCourt, 1930-2009

Readers of this newspaper have come to know Frank McCourt in a different way over the past several years. As someone who thought there were too many unsung heroes in the classroom, McCourt was kind enough to play host to Manhattan Media’s annual Blackboard Awards, affairs honoring New York City’s top schools and teachers. Audiences marveled at the chance to see this expert storyteller who had a penchant for sticking it to the powers that be, including boneheaded administrators, media outlets in search of the next salacious story and politicians who liked to tell teachers how to do their jobs, a perennial target of his scorn. Read more

A Frank Memoir

“When I look back on our teaching days I wonder how we managed to survive at all. It was of course, a miserable career: the happy career is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable teaching career is the miserable high school teaching career, and worse yet is the miserable New York public high school teaching career.”

This is how I’d imagine a Frank McCourt memoir about our teaching days together at Stuyvesant High School might begin. Read more

An Exciting New School

Parents in Harlem, East Harlem and the Upper West Side, as well as throughout the city, should be excited by an idea that was proposed at Brandeis High School last week: a racially and ethnically diverse new high school on West 84th Street emphasizing writing and literature that may open in September 2010. Read more

PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING VISIT

Beacon High School students celebrated their stately new library with a grand reopening last month. The teens were of course impressed with the library’s new computers, movie-viewing rooms and access to online databases. But the big draw for the students was author Frank McCourt, who spoke at the school’s weeklong literary festival in honor of the new library technology, thanks to a City Council grant.

The festival started on Nov. 17 and featured three Pulitzer Prize winners.
McCourt, a former high school English teacher and one of the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, was the guest of honor at the grand reopening breakfast.
“The kids were enthralled,” said Anne Hanin, the librarian at the West 61st Street school. “Kids who couldn’t get into the library, they were hanging by the windows and doors.”

McCourt, the guest speaker for the day, regaled students with his humorous anecdotes about teaching and his somber tales of growing up in poverty. Several of the 9th grade classes he spoke to read his award-winning book, Angela’s Ashes, last summer. Samara Zelko, a junior at Beacon, said his wit was a hit with students from all grades.

“He had a very intellectual sense of humor that is very different from his writing style,” Zelko said. “He can really capture an audience of mixed ages.”
McCourt answered students’ questions, which covered his life in Ireland and Brooklyn, as well as his writing and teaching career.

“He was a real celebrity on campus,” Hanin said. “They were asking for autographs in pages of their books and any piece of paper they could find.”