The Rings of Saturn - W.G. Sebald - Melancholic Memories

The Oxford dictionary describes the term 'melancholy' as 'deep and long-lasting sadness'. This is the theme of W.G Sebald's 'The Rings of Saturn' which is about the inexorable passage of time, human greed, the changes and destruction both cause and the burden of memories. It's futile to classify this book as it is part memoir, part history, part myths and not the least about travels. Travel here doesn't refer to the normal travelogue which is about the beauty of a place, it's general history, people, cuisine, the author's experiences during the travel etc. It's about physical travels as well as mental travels by the author into the past. The mental travels are as important  with the physical travels being just a starting point. Like a small stone thrown in pond resulting in the ripple effect of concentric circles, a single thought in the author's mind leads to ruminations on a wide variety of things. For e.g. A chance viewing of a BBC documentary about a person (Casement) executed for treason in England leads to a train of thoughts about that Casement's meeting with Conrad, the oppressive lifestyle of Conrad's parents under the Czars, Conrad's travel to Congo, the rape of Congo by Belgium and finds ends with observations on Casement's life, which in a way complete the circle of thoughts. 

During his travel through the coastal regions of England, Sebald goes to places that were once thriving, but are in ruins now. These are places that practically exist only in maps now (in some cases not even in them) and in the memories of a minority. Sample this passage about a manor in Somerleyton on a summer night when

"the incomparable glasshouses, borne on cast iron fillers and braces and seemingly weightless in their  filigree grace,  shed their gleaming radiance on the dark. Countless Argand burners backed with silver-plated reflectors, the white flames consuming the poisonous gas with a low hissing sound, cast an immense  brightness that pulsated like the current of life that runs through the earth"

This was a manor that was once so painstakingly constructed so that the natural and artificial "interacted in such a way that one had the illusion of complete harmony between the natural and the manufactured.". (Much like the palace of Indraprastha built by Mayan?). What is left of all that grandeur now? Little the little the manor has disintegrated, all the servants are gone and what is now left is the carcass of a once great animal which has long since breathed its last. 

The population in these places has dropped hugely and the people remaining are those who haven't moved on to greener pastures, either due to the bond they have with that place which they do not have the strength to break or simply because they lack the will to embrace a new reality. In Lowesoft, the author stays at Ablion described at the beginning of the 20th century as the "hotel on a promenade of a superior description"  but which is now as run down as the Lowesoft itself. The receptionist there is young woman "dressed in the style of the Thirties" and who avoids eye contact with the author. Who is she and why is she dressed in the style of 30's. It's the dressing style that intrigues us. Is she a phantom from the past, haunting a theater which was once hers, a theater whose patrons and other employees have all moved on to other things and where the stage and the auditorium is always empty except for her?

Or take the Ashbury's a once very wealthy family now down in the dumps and living in their three-storey house which is probably their only property now. Actually it's even wrong to state that they are living in the three-storey house, because most parts of the house is unused. Much like in the story 'House Taken Over' by Julio Cortazar, "they were first obliged to abandon the rooms on the upper storeys, or even whole wings and retreat to more or less usable quarters on the ground floor",  the only difference being that in this case there is no supernatural phenomena that is driving the family out of their own house. The reason being mainly the unrestrained spending of the rich while never taking into account the changes rushing upon them, the result being that one day they find themselves at a crossroads as to how to proceed further. Unable to make neither a new start nor having the wherewithal to survive in the face of heavy odds, the family is stuck in a limbo, with the daughters of Mrs.Ashbury spending their time weaving. Sebald nails when he says of them

"What work they did always had about it something aimless and meaningless and seemed not so much part of a daily routine as an expression of a deeply engrained distress. The fact is that in the case of the Ashbury's they were as much to be blamed as the changing time, but it doesn't lessen the poignancy of the situation. 

These changes, places falling into ruin are not just a factor of an irreversible process of time, in a lot of cases human greed plays a great role in this. And from say the fifteen to the early twentieth century, imperialism played a great part in it (it does today too albeit with the different name of globalization). Now, when we talk of imperialism we generally associate it with the British and maybe the French. But in the 15th and 16th centuries when England was not the superpower that it was to become later, several European countries jostled with England for world dominion. Sebald tells us of one such instance when Belgium raped Congo of it's natural resources exploiting it to the hilt. In a shocking disclosure of the limits of human cruelty, he tells us about the Belgium king Leopold's explanation for the atrocities committed by the Belgium.

"he considered the work done by the blacks as a perfectly legitimate alternative to the payment of taxes, and if the white supervisory personnel at times went too far, as he did not deny, it was due to the fact that the climate of the Congo triggered a kind of dementia in the brains of some whites, which unfortunately it was not always possible to prevent in time, a fact which was regrettable but could hardly be changed."

Why did the king feel so, did he in the heart of hearts knew that what his country was doing was criminal and tried to justify it with some explanation or did he really feel that he and his country was doing Congo a great service by civilizing them and any harmful side-effects was only an unavoidable collateral damage. The clue to this lies in the declaration by Leopold in the inaugural meeting of the association formed for exploration. He says

"The  aim, said King Leopold, was to breakthrough the darkness in which whole peoples still dwelt, and to mount a crusade in order to bring this glorious century of progress to the point of perfection"

The words 'darkness', 'crusade' are the key here as they indicate the preconception of Leopold of the people in other continents, people who according to him are pagans/heathens living in 'darkness' so need need light (i.e) rescuing by the true followers of God. And what best justification for the rescuing of doomed souls other than the word 'crusade', a word that brings to mind images of centuries of violence over a disputed birth place. Call it Crusade, Jihad or Kar-seva, the words may change, but their connotation never does and neither does the violence implied and caused by them. So one has to conclude that Leopold genuinely believed that the blacks deserved what they were getting.  I have a beef with Sebald here, the only place of dissent I have with his thoughts and ideas in this book. About the above declaration by Leopold, Sebald comments

"In the nature of things, the lofty spirit expressed in this declaration  was later lost from sight."

Yes, at a cursory glance Leopold's proclamation seems genuine and of good intentions. But as always, ideas such as civilizing the 'other' are mainly a euphemism for either self-serving improvement or for mass destruction of a race or at the very least it's culture (which in a way is the same as destroying it's people). The Spaniards would have gone with similar lofty ideals when they reached 'South America' and we all know the result of the Spanish inquisition. And even taking the comment at face value, what gives one person the right to civilize another. Granted that Congo would not have been advanced (from a purely technological point of view) at that time, but when has knowledge equaled civilization. It's like saying that a person who is not aware of the internet today is uncivilized. Yes the net makes all our lives easier, and the person who doesn't use it loses out on a lot of things but who is to say that a person unaware of it is uncivilized? Maybe he is a lot happier than millions of people whose only aim would be to get as many 'likes' as possible in the virtual world. I was surprised at Sebald's comment, but to be fair he completely strips open the lid on the atrocities committed in the name of civilizing and in his own words "in the entire history of colonialism, most of it not yet written, there is scarcely a darker chapter than the one termed The Opening of the Congo". Maybe it's just the natural mindset of a person born in the West looking at things willing to give at least a tiny leeway to Leopold, whereas someone like me from the East is unforgiving. And finally the book is not a political statement by Sebald, just his musings on a lot of things, so maybe I am overreacting here.

It would have been very easy for the book to become a maudlin, sentimental work. But while narrating all these events  from across the globe, Sebald doesn't ever even get nostalgic, there is no longing for the days gone past, painting it be some kind of utopia that was lost forever. In the case where he describes the 'Opium Wars' waged by the British on China, there is an indictment of the Chinese royal family too, their failings and attempts at self-preservation in times of great danger for their country. The 'Dowager' chinese empress is more concerned with the maintenance of the silk worms rather than about the imminent capture of her country by the British. Makes one almost wonder if the Chinese were better off under the British rather than their own royal family, but one is also aware that it is just a case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. There is a resigned acceptance of the fact that the natural progress of time and human greed will cause enormous upheavals and the most one can do is remember them in the slim hope that it will not be repeated again in the near future.

Sebald's writing has a timelessness quality about it. By it I don't mean to say that it will last for ever (who can ever say that), but that when we read it there is a suspension of time and place. As his musings move from one continent to another, from one person to another there is no discernible jump in our mindset, its like time has stopped for us too and we move seamlessly from the 20th century to the 15th and from England to Russia to Congo as if it is the most natural thing in the world. It's like 'stream of consciousnesses'  in slow motion. Through all the details of desolation, he never loses sight of the individual, the micro and the macro are always entwined when he describes a place, an event or an era.  Like when he scales the cliffs of a seashore at 'Covehithe', he describes the darkening clouds, the waves crashing against the shore, the weeds and muses

"human reasoning , diseased as it is, needs to seize on some other kind that it can take to be inferior and thus deserving of annihilation" 

In the midst of such thoughts he suddenly gives us a striking visual. In the deserted shore line there is a couple

"a man stretched  full length over another body of which nothing was visible but the legs , spread and angled"

That's it, Sebald leaves the place and nothing else is told about the couple that he glimpsed upon. But it sets our mind running. What was the couple doing in such a desolate place. Well we understand what they were doing and a better query would be why were they in such a place with dusk coming upon them. I imagine Adam and Eve would have been in the same situation, all alone in the world, making love by the shores, listening to the waves crashing and the sky darkening and the creator (Sebald) seeing them and hastily averting his eyes. If this attaches a micro level view to a macro, in a reversal of it comments the following about a group of fishermen, each one alone and fishing

"They just want to be in a place where they have the world behind them, and before them nothing but emptiness".

(I have so longed to be in exactly such a state, the difference being I have imagined myself sitting on a vast expanse of land with the sun beating down with just a single tree under which I am in an almost catatonic state of both body and mind.)

This book requires just one thing from the reader. You need to be in a contemplative mindset to read it. Though this is by no means a slow or drab work, it cannot be read hurriedly. It also doesn't take you by force, it is you who has to give yourself to it and let yourself be taken on as Sebald's companion on his travels. I will put it this way, if you are say in the mind to read Pynchon, but come across a Murakami work you should be able to read the Murakami with no major issue. But if you come across Alice Munro when you are in the mood to read Pynchon, you need to tune your mind slightly to it. I haven't mentioned this with respect to Sebald, as he is unique to me, I cannot fit him to anyone I have read which is my limitation. The closest I can come up with is a tenuous link to Milan Kundera's ruminative works like Immortality etc. I had a a couple of false starts with the book due to the same reasons and every time I started from the beginning. But it was all worth it and much more. Don't miss this gem of a book.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers

'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' - Don't judge a book by its title, because if you do so you could miss out on this book.  The title itself could be off putting for some, you could think, who the hell is this author, what is thinking of himself, how dare does he put such a boastful title etc etc. You could think all these be wrong on all these counts if you do not read this book, skipping it based based on the title alone. 

This is a quasi memoir of a part of Dave Egger's life when his parents passed away with a very short period of each other (1991-1992, when Dave was 21 ) and his taking care of his younger brother Tolph (8 at the time). There are 3 major themes things in this book 

     1. Altering the rules of conventional reading. 

     2. Zeroing in on a intensely personal experience and telling in a zany manner, without diluting it.

     3. Mapping the personal core to an universal experience

  

The rules of conventional reading are altered from the very beginning, right from the (supposedly) preface. Actually, whatever I (or any reader) am trying to convey in this post could already have been covered in some manner in the preface itself (an instance of the author predicting the reader), but having read it I have to say what I feel irrespective of whether I was manipulated as the author wanted or not. 

 The preface begins with the following note from the author

"DIALOGUE: This has of course been almost entirely reconstructed. The dialogue, though all essentially true - except that which is obviously not true, as when people break out of their narrative time-space continuum to cloyingly talk about the book itself - has been written from memory and reflects both the author's memory's limitations and his imagination's nudgings. All the individual words and sentences have been run through a conveyor, manufactured like so: 1) they are remembered; 2) they are written; 3) they are rewritten, to sound more accurate;4) they are edited to fit within the narrative (though keeping with their essential truth); 5) they are rewritten again to spare the author and the other characters the shame of sounding as inarticulate as they invariably to, or would, if their sentences, almost invariably began with the word "Dude - as in, for example, "Dude, she died -" were merely transcribed. "

At the very outset our opinions of memoirs are torn apart. If this is a memoir  then how can things like dialogues be rewritten/edited to fit the narrative fit into it?. Isn't a memoir supposed to be fully true, right down to the last clearing of the throat by a character. But that's just an illusion, a unspoken, sub-conscious agreement we enter with an author when we start reading a memoir (i.e) whatever is in the book is completely true and as it happened and it makes us cry/laugh with the (real?) events that happened. We do not take into account for instance the tricks that memory can play. This is true of all memoirs, but none of them come out in the open at the very beginning and straight out tell that there are obvious re-constructions in it. (well Marquez of course did it in his 'Living to tell the Tale' where he put it succinctly in a single line, but of course that memoir came about later than ABWOSG). This sets the tone for the entire book where we are always self-conscious about what is happening. No, this is not the much ballyhooed self-consciousness of a reader that he is at all times reading a work of fiction, but rather goes into the next level where the reader is as self-conscious about the fact that the author too is self-conscious about the reader being self-conscious as it is about being self-conscious about the content of the book itself. Confusing it may seen, but just look at it as endless recursive consciousness between the author and the reader. Dave plugs it in the preface where says

"The knowingness of the books self consciousness aspect:

While the author is self-conscious about being self-referential, he is also knowing about that self-conscious self-referential. ..... : he also plans to be clearly, obviously aware of his knowingness about his self-consciousness of self-referentiality. Further, he is fully cognizant, way ahead of you, in terms of knowing about and fully admitting the gimmickry inherent in all this...."

Let me tell you an instance of this self-consciousness. Midway in the book, the narrative style changes to an interview format, where Dave recounts his younger days in this format. Just as you think, "mmm, nice move by Dave to plug-in his past in a different format", he pops-up (in the middle of the interview) and says that, yes, he has brought in this gimmick. This is what I mean by endless recursive consciousness between the author and the reader, where the author too is conscious about how the reader would feel at certain points of the book.

There is also a section 'Mistakes we knew we were making' at the end, where Dave lists some omissions, changes, additions he did (like changing events, or events that didn't happen at all) making us look at the book in a different manner.  It would be interesting to read the book once again after going through 'Mistakes we knew we were making', it would surely be a different experience to the first time. Just think, you read something deeply moving, but then in this section you find that it didn't happen at all. If the book is labelled fiction, then it doesn't matter at all, but how would you feel about it in the context of this book being treated as a memoir. As for me, I look at it as both (quasi memoir) and probably that's the best way to approach this book, where you are never sure whether the author is laughing with you or at you.

These in your face proclamations in the preface (running up to 20 odd pages) can make a reader think that the author is showing off, trying to impress and intimidate.  But as I mentioned in the beginning, there is a deeply emotional core to the book, which starts off with Dave's mother terminally ill (his father having passed away just short time earlier), her demise and moves to Dave giving up his studies to take care of Tolph. They move to California where Tolph is enrolled and the rest of the book is pretty much about the next few years and their living together. Dave has an elder sister (not much older though) and elder brother. Just imagine this, a guy just 21, whose father has just died and he has come home again to see his mother too pass away. What sort of a scar it can leave to one. And it's not a case of the mother passing away suddenly, she is suffering from cancer and it is a gradual descent into the nothingness that is death. We know the outcome, but are not aware of when it will actually happen. Any decline in health could be it, but it could also turn out to be a false alarm. This uncertainty can be as tormenting as the actual event.   Dave's mother has one such sharp sudden decline in health and the conversation between Dave and his sister on it, brings forth the helplessness of being in such a situation. 

"What?"

"This can't be it"

"It could be it."

"I know it could be it, but it shouldn't be it"

"She wants it to be it"

"No, she doesn't"

"She said so."

"She didn't meant it."

........

"What do you think?"

"I think she's scared"

"Yeah"

"And I think she's not ready. I mean, are you ready?"

"No, of course not. You?"

"No. No, no".

Not your everyday conversation between two 20 something siblings right. It is the worst thing that could happen to any of us, where we something bad is going to happen and we are powerless to prevent it. It is bad enough when one is old and mature enough to face it, but when you are so young what do you do?Death could then become an obsession with you and that's what happens here,  the specter of death hanging over the entire book (more on this below).

Dave and Tolph migrate to California where Tolph is enrolled in a scholl and Dave does some part time jobs taking care of him. The narrative tone here is light, almost flippant, because that is how a 21 year old boy (because, lets face at 21 you are more of a boy than a man) would react to situations beyond his control. He is not a child to cry, but neither is he a man to face things stoically. So under the facade of lightheartedness, the emotional turmoil is buried. There is an overcompensation by Dave with respect to Tolph when he wants Tolph to feel utterly normal, as normal as he would feel if their parents were alive. (they play act with Dave as the father and Tolph asking him for something that is refused) There is always a balancing act on what Tolph should see or hear and what he should not (e.g. Dave's girlfriends are not discussed much). Dave becomes a kind of surrogate father albeit of a blundering kind. The blunder could be a minor one where Dave wakes up very late, resulting in Tolph being late to school, for which Dave composes the following note.

"Dear Ms.Richardson,

I am sorry Chris is late this morning. I could make something up about an appointment or a sickness, but the fact is that we woke up late. Go figure.

Best,

Brother of Chris"

The blundering could also be of a slightly more serious (hygienic) kind like

"We have an ant problem. We have an ant problem because we have not yet grasped the difference between paper mess and food mess. We leave food out, we leave food on the plates in the sink, and when I finally turn myself to the task of washing the dishes, I must first wash away all the ants, those tiny black ones, off the plates and silverware and down the drain."

These may be flippantly described, but underneath it is the struggle they undergo to just get through a normal day. The apparent lightheartedness is exposed when Dave tells that

"We scrape through every day blindly, always getting stumped on something we should know - how to plunge a toilet, how to boil corn, his Social Security number, the date of our father's birthday - such that every day that he gets to school, that I get to work and back in time for dinner, each day that we cook and eat before nine and he goes to bed before eleven and doesn't have blue malnourished- looking rings around his eyes like he did for all those months last year - we never figured out why - feels like we've pulled off some fantastic trick - an escape from a burning station wagon, the hiding of the Statue of Liberty"

So, Dave misses forms to filled, sending them in at the last moment, forgets date/time of the school functions, the house is unclean, Tolph is often dressed shabbily but still the 2 manage to create a household of sorts, which is very different from the normal ones, but that's because you cannot expect a 21 year old care full boy to suddenly become the master of the house, with no one guiding him. And, in a truly poignant role reversal of sorts, sometime after a couple of years, one night Dave is down and out and Tolph fixes food and takes care of him. It is a very small part yes, but it's like when parents become aged and the children start taking care of them. Similarly at that point we see that Tolph is no more a child who needs full time caring, but is one who can look after his elder brother. Small moments like these bring forth the bonding between the two.

Where Dave takes the personal into the universal is his obsession with death. Dave obsesses about his own death of AIDS, wonders about funerals, obsesses about the remains of his parents and is always trying to face up to it. His casual attitude is but a reaction to the omnipresent death. It is always the unspoken, unseen character in this book. It is present everywhere and at all times. Death and flippancy go hand in hand here, complementing each other like the Ying and the Yang. Even when Dave is happy, he cannot stop thinking about it. When Dave goes on a date leaving Tolph with a babysitter he cannot stop obsessing about how the babysitter turns out to be a child abuser and torments and kills Tolph. Not just Dave, but death does touch several of his friends too. Shalini has a near death experience after which she goes into a coma and only partially recovers, John also has lost both his parents and is always threatening he is going to commit suicide, leading him to be admitted to psychiatric wards. Death leaves no one untouched and it is final. But it is something that is very difficult to come to terms with even when you are old and mature, leave alone when you are so young. At that stage in life, you try to avoid it, try to put it off as late as possible, but the harder you try the harder it becomes to forget about it. That's why Dave discusses a world where all people get together in the morning, raze all the buildings to ground and build a new set of buildings at the end of the day. The next day the same routine is followed. Nothing is permanent except the impermanence of everything and there is no finality (like death) as buildings keep getting destroyed and built and every day(the resurrection is almost instantaneous). Kind of like 'Sisyphus' myth in reverse, where man is ready to the same thing again and again and chooses (partially) infinite monotony over finality (death).

Caught up in these emotions, one could easily fail to grasp the sense of time and place that is captured in vivid detail here and which is of importance too. The time period is the early 90's, a period where the initial breakthroughs of all the advancements in technology/entertainment were being made. We see through Dave's eyes the tech companies set up in California (in what would be widely known throughout the world just a bit  later as of course 'Silicon valley'), people working there for 10-12 hours in search of the next breath through. We see the advent of MTV and reality shows in their infancy and their potential for causing havoc with our lives. Even Dave's obsession with Aids is a reflection of the times. Remember the early 90's when Aids first burst on the screen? It was the scariest thing imaginable. I remember the uproar it caused even in India when Magic Johnson was diagnosed with HIV. Remember it was the time of pre-liberalized or just liberalized India and the media wasn't so pervasive. But still I remember reading about HIV in just about every paper and magazine (both English and Tamil). It was the N-bomb of that 90's just waiting to explode. That's why Dave doesn't just worry about death, AIDS is always a tag to it. These things make the book more real and not like the events in it happened in some kind of vacuum. 

Heartbreaking it definitely is, but staggering? Yes it is that too in several places, but Dave kind of extends it to an extent where it seems thrust upon. I will put it this way. Consider an instant in a tennis match, where Federer is in the middle of the court, his opponent is completely out of position at one end of the court, one entire side of the court is available to Federer to launch a winner, but what does he do? He plays a cute drop shot, which is risky. What happens then? If the shot falls correctly and he gets the point, we praise him for his incredible ability. But if it hits the net, then we tend to say it was a risky shot. Here in Tennis, the validity of the shot depends on it's outcome, but it hits the target it's a good shot irrespective of whether it was the correct shot for that moment. But fiction doesn't work that way. Irrespective of whether something is written well, it makes a impact only when the author can convince a reader that what was written at a particular point makes sense at that point. If the reader is not convinced about it, that part seems superfluous to him and that's what happens here some times. Like at the beginning of the book, after Dave and his Sister talk about their mothers sudden deterioration, there is a 2-3 page inner monologue where Dave starts imagining about the funeral, who will come, the eulogy etc. Now, he obsesses about death a lot throughout the book, but here at this point it seemed a definite attempt at manipulation. Of course, in the preface itself he mentions that the books will do all these kinds of trickery, but still it's a bit jarring. Compared to this, his thinking about Tolph being killed by the babysitter is more in tune with the flow of the book. Yes, it's acceptable that Dave would think constantly about his Tolph on a date especially given their situation, but when you think about it in detail, it is debatable whether he would go to the extent of imagining Tolph being sexually assaulted, the baby sitter taunting Dave with notes etc. But this is where as a reader you get into a tacit agreement with the author, whereby you accept this obsessiveness as being possible. This happens several times in the book, at the same time it does fail too sometimes. 

Ultimately, whether you like the book or not, whether you find it staggering or heartbreaking depends on your expectations of fiction. If you are one who likes precise, almost perfect fiction you would probably be put off by it. But if you like large, sprawling works (not in size, but in ideas and themes), which may not be perfect or near perfect, has some extraneous parts, but which however take us to areas unseen and unobserved till now, this is for you.

While reading it, one cannot avoid thinking about 'Infinite Jest' and the manner in which both these 2 books converge and diverge, not in any specific themes, but in a more general manner. It starts right from the titles. 'Infinite', 'Heartbreaking', etc immediately indicate a larger scope . If DFW uses footnotes as a means of disrupting our reading, Dave uses the preface and the 'Mistakes we were making' section to do the same. If one hand, DFW takes the universal concept of pursuit of happiness and maps it to individuals and it's impact on them, Dave takes the deeply personal emotion of an individual seeing death and maps it to mankind's general obsession with it. And finally both books prove that the form/narrative style of a book need not be gratuitous or self-serving, that it can co-exist with it's content without affect the actual storytelling and indeed embellish it too. This to me is the  biggest achievement of this book, that in spite of the various tropes like the meshing of different of all narrative styles, disruption of the reading process, the author popping up now and then etc, it still remains deeply personal and moving.

Frank McCourt's trilogy of memoirs - Short notes on books by a master raconteur

Frank McCourt was over 60 when his first book a memoir was published and got a Pulitzer. Sound like something out of a book, but it's true and sometimes the truth can indeed be stranger than fiction. Following the success of his first book 'Angela's Ashes', he wrote 2 other follow up memoirs, tracing different parts of his life. In the best of cases, the term 'memoir' is pretty ambiguous, considering our propensity to selectively remember (unconsciously) only certain events and that too only in the manner in which we want to. In McCourt's case too, there have been a lot of accusations that he exaggerated things in his memoirs (particularly the first one). Anyway, these books could be read either as a straight forward memoir or a book with both fact and fiction mixed. 

Angela's Ashes - The book is McCourt memoir of his childhood and early adulthood,  growing up in Brooklyn and Limerick (Ireland), with more emphasis on Limerick where he spent the most of his childhood after his parents returned back to Ireland. McCourt is born as the eldest son Malachy and Angela.The initial parts detail their life in Brooklyn, with his father unable to hold on to his job, the regular childbirth, death of one of them which results in the family moving back to Ireland. Limerick is a gloomy city as portrayed by McCourt, not just in the climate, but also in the claustrophobic atmosphere, where religion and sin (naturally) looms large over the people. It is a hard life, sharing a single toilet with an entire lane, the father suffering from a drinking problem resulting in persistent poverty where the family just about manages to stay above water, just a step above the beggars. The father is a classic case of drink-bust, cheerful and loving towards his family when not in the influence of drinks and a monster when in it's influence, which seems to be about most of the time. The part where Angela and Frank search for him on Salary day to make sure that they get at-least some of it before he blows it up is something that is common to any place in the world. A family going bust due to the actions of the father. McCourt though, shows signs of enterprise from childhood, getting small jobs and trying to make do with the money he gets. As Malachy finally the leaves the family for good, Frank gets to be the sole earner, with his brothers being much younger. (Frank himself being only 14 or 15 then). They then have to swallow the fact that their Mother has to give sexual favors to a relative in return for him letting the family stay with them. The books ends with Frank making his way to America at 19. Though most of the incidents in the book is gloomy, it is told i mostly a comic manner, making the book a kind of tragicomedy.Through all the sufferings, deprivations Frank never loses his sense of humor, always trying to make the best out of things. The growing up pangs of Franks, his preoccupation of being without sin at any point (the Catholic impact of sin) so that if he dies the next moment his soul won't go to hell may seen funny, but more than that it shows the impact that militant religious teaching can have on young minds. You can sense and feel the cold, dark, unforgiving climate of the place, the terror the teachers/priests would have created in the young kids and above all feel the pain of a family struggling to make its way through the squalor that is life itself. However, some of the incident stretch the limits of credulity that a reader would be willing to assume. One can only assume that Frank did some embellishment for the sake of making them more interesting. In any case, McCourt is the consummate story teller in this book, whether the events are fact or fiction. He never loses his grip, whether it is describing his drunken father awakening the kids at night to make them sing, or the kids trying to climb up a pole to see a nude girl or searching around for coal to survive the winter. He tells about all these with verve, panache and above all with an eye for making them all sound engrossing, the mark of a true and great storyteller, nay rather raconteur. 

'Tis - The book starts with Frank arriving in America, looks at his struggle to find a job and place to stay, moves to his joining the army, being posted in Germany, the incidents that happen there. He then returns to America, joins 'New York University', gets married, has a drinking problem, joins the teaching profession and gets divorced. The book ends with his mother's death and Frank and his brother getting together in a bar to drink in her memory. I see that the above part seems more like a synopsis than any actual impact of the book. That's because the book itself is structured like this, all events seem to happen in a breakneck speed with no time for  any reflection. Now, a page turner is not a bad thing at all, but at what cost. Tightly constructed writing and page turners need not be mutually exclusive, like say even 'Angela's Ashes'. You could write a tight, well constructed book that could be hugely entertaining without compromising it's basic content. But here Frank seems to have concentrated only on the entertainment part, the result being that the books goes at a breakneck speed, but unfortunately to nowhere land. We never get the empathy for the characters that we got in 'Angela's Ashes', though there are a lot of such incidents in the book. Most incidents are just skimmed on the surface and then it's on to the next incident. For instance Frank's meeting with his estranged father. It's almost as if Frank decided to put it in the book as an afterthought since it would have made for a great incident. There could have been any number of ways in which the two met. But we never get to know whether Frank is comfortable or un-comfortable or angry or happy or sad or completely disassociated or disinterested with meeting his father. It's like Frank thought that the premise of the two meeting would be enough to carry the next few pages. Or Frank's drinking problem and his divorce due to that. He is honest and frank enough to admit the drinking problem, but again it is glossed over and his divorce is like a footnote with nothing on the emotional crisis that would have followed during and after it. When one looks at the whole book, Frank seems to have made a conscious decision to skim over the hard/sad parts as much as possible, while making sure that the book is an entertainer. I think that's where the books goes wrong, instead of being an engrossing read it strives to be entertaining and in the process, losing much of the emotional investment that the reader did in the first book and ultimately resulting in a bloated, half baked memoir.

Teacher Man - This is the final part of the memoir and is about Frank's teaching career. He taught for about 30 years in various schools and the book is about that. This is the slimmest of the 3 books, which could be good in one way considering the length of 'Tis and the journey to nowhere in it. On the other hand, one cannot but think about the experiences and incidents that could have gone into it considering Frank's long teaching career. The book does have it's moments though, like the furor that teaching 'Catcher in the Rye' causes among parents, Frank giving essay assignments with a title of reason for taking leave/not doing homework etc, which causes the students imagination to run amok. But by and large it seems like an opportunity missed by Frank to mine such a vast period of experience, but again considering 'Tis it may not have been such a bad decision to keep it trim. 

When one considers all the 3 books, 'Angela's Ashes' is obviously the best one and a must read. The other two suffer from the classic case of writing what one thinks the reader would like instead of writing what one wants with the confidence that the reader would like it. In any case, McCourt seems more like a great raconteur than a writer, one with whom one can readily spend a considerable time listening to his experiences. (notwithstanding the jerks we get in the second and third parts of the memoir). I just think that maybe the second and third books too would be a great read as an audio book, listening to them in McCourt's voice itself.