Former Student Disses Author Frank McCourt: "He Was Very Self-Absorbed... He Was Such A Bad Teacher"

Former Student Disses Author Frank McCourt: "He Was Very Self-Absorbed... He Was Such A Bad Teacher"

Frank McCourt taught English for 30 years, mostly at Stuyvesant HS, before he won the Pulitzer Prize for his memoir "Angela's Ashes." But not all of his students give him high marks. At a recent UrbanDaddy Web site party on Hudson Street, investment banker Fred Kwon told Webster Hall's Baird Jones he studied with McCourt in 1986. "He was very self-absorbed," Kwon recalled. "Many students did not show up, and when they did, they would be talking during class. I felt really bad for him." Kwon said McCourt was obsessed with James Joyce, the impenetrable author of "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake." "He was the only writer we read," Kwon said. "McCourt would say we were useless, or that we were not ready to be educated. Sometimes he would stop talking for 15 minutes and he would just read the paper...

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