ARCHIVE OF LETTERS: 21 pages

1983 - 1990. Letters. Folds from mailing. Near Fine. Superb archive of seven letters from the author of ANGELA'S ASHES to R'Lene Dahlberg, fellow teacher at Stuyvesant High School, friend, wife of author Edward Dahlberg, and muse. Mostly chatty correspondence, all but two pages handwritten by McCourt, complete with hand-addressed envelopes and mostly written in New York City. In one letter McCourt describes being at Rockaway Beach with his daughter Maggie who is searching for her lost hamster with a friend: "The little bugger won't come out. I've tempted him with everything from carrots to watercress. I've made assorted seductive noises. I've exposed mineself. I've even promised him a night out with a hamsteress. To no avail. Maggie & Clare are less interested in hamsters than in boys. It's all boys now. Boys, boys, boys. I'll break her face. She checks herself out in the mirror by the hour. I told her cut it out. She [sic] wearing out the mirror. Also, I'm getting an education in teeny bop mating habits and teeny bop music. Pubescence is a pain in the arse." In the same letter he describes an encounter with "a maiden" who "had her way with me on the pitcher's mound in the local baseball field. She was a Catholic, too, and told me I was much better than a state of grace. You could always regain your state of grace, she said, but the way I was drinking she decided to get me while she could before I became a shadow of my former self. Does this make sense to you? I'll clean it all up in the novel I'm writing called IN THE FLESH." McCourt also discusses the IRA, his divorce from Alberta, his tour with his brother Malachi and the rave reviews they were getting, how much he likes Chicago, teaching, etc. In one letter he gives a list of saints. All letters are SIGNED "Frank," with one SIGNED "Frank, son of Angela." Also included is a handwritten note by R'Lene Dahlberg describing her relationship to McCourt which, by all accounts, seems to have cooled dramatically upon the publication of the Pulitzer Prize winning ANGELA'S ASHES.

McCourt admired Edward Dahlberg's superb autobiography BECAUSE I WAS FLESH and modeled his own ANGELA'S ASHES after it, both writers casting their mothers as the central characters. Both emerged from impoverished childhoods to achieve success, though Dahlberg's was critical rather than financial. Dahlberg was dead when ANGELA'S ASHES was published in 1996, but his former wife, R'lene Dahlberg, was alive. She was the first person to encourage McCourt to publish his work and stated in a private note (included here) that she "got him his first publication- called 'If you live in a lane.'" Her importance to McCourt was publicly acknowledged by him in his book where she is listed first on the Acknowledgments page:

"This is a small hymn to an exaltation of women.
R'lene Dahlberg fanned the embers."

McCourt told friends a funny tale of walking with Edward Dahlberg down Second Avenue. Dahlberg was "pontificating like Jehova" and as they approached the Jewish funeral home where his "sainted" mother had been laid out, Dahlberg stepped in dog excrement.

"How can letters flourish in the commonwealth," Dahlberg immediately raved, "when pederasts are permitted to parade their poodles to dung on the pavement!"

He removed his soiled shoe and threw it in the city garbage can, continuing home with one shoe on and one shoe gone.