Malachy McCourt est un acteur et écrivain irlando-américain connu pour ses mémoires, qui détaillent sa vie en Irlande et son retour subséquent aux États-Unis. Malgré une éducation limitée, il a exploité avec succès une taverne à Manhattan fréquentée par des célébrités. McCourt est également l'auteur d'un livre sur l'histoire de la ballade irlandaise « Danny Boy ». Son écriture mélange souvent des éléments autobiographiques avec des aperçus de la culture et de l'histoire irlandaises.
A photographic portrait of the Irish landscape and its people commemorates traditional regional life with a range of duotone photographs, complemented with texts by best-selling Irish-American authors including Angela's Ashes's Frank McCourt and Singing My Him Song's, Malachy McCourt. 35,000 first printing.
Malachy McCourt grew up in Limerick amid death, squalor, poverty and abuse. When he went to America as a young man, he took with him a gargantuan appetite for what life has to offer - and an equal drive to forget what it had delivered so far. In A Monk Swimming, he caroused his way all over the world, becoming a familiar face in movies and television, and in bars from Paris to Calcutta.
Slapped with a libel suit after an appearance on a talk show, Malachy McCourt crows, "If they could only see me now in the slums of Limerick, a big shot, sued for a million. Bejesus, isn't America a great and wonderful country?" His older brother Frank's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Angela's Ashes , took its somber tone from the bleak atmosphere of those slums, while Malachy's boisterous recollections are fueled by his zestful appreciation for the opportunities and oddities of his native land. He and Frank were born in Brooklyn, moved with their parents to Ireland as children, then returned to the States as adults. This book covers the decade 1952-63, when Malachy roistered across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, but spent most of his time in New York City. There his ready wit and quick tongue won him an acting job with the Irish Players, a semiregular stint on The Tonight Show hosted by Jack Paar, and friendships with some well-heeled, well-born types who shared his fondness for saloon life and bankrolled him in an East Side saloon that may have been the first singles bar. He chronicles those events--and many others--with back-slapping bonhomie. Although McCourt acknowledges the personal demons that pursued him from his poverty-stricken childhood and destroyed his first marriage, this is on the whole an exuberant autobiography that pays tribute to the joys of a freewheeling life.
In the successful tradition of Thomas Cahill's modern-day classic, How the Irish Saved Civilization , here is an authoritative and completely engaging one-volume account of Irish history by County Limerick native, gifted storyteller, and bestselling author Malachy McCourt. Its pages are populated with figures from myth, legend, ancient history, and current events, from Cu Chulainn and Brian Boru to Oliver Cromwell, James Joyce, Lady Gregory, Gerry Adams, and Sinead O'Connor—some beloved, some controversial, but all with an undeniable influence on the course of Irish history and in turn, the history of the modern world. McCourt proves an irresistible guide on this vivid tour through the colorful and turbulent history of the Emerald Isle, from the Celtic settlements, through Viking and British occupations, modern troubles and struggle for independence. He also offers fresh insights on the country's cultural contributions to folklore, literature, art, music, and cuisine.