Q&A …

… How Michael Brendan Dougherty subverted the Irish misery memoir. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I didn't like Angela's Ashes when I read it. One paper, I think The Cork Examiner, went through its archives and found pictures of the supposedly disease-ridden McCourt boys looking quite fine in their sports uniforms belonging to one of the better clubs in Limerick. This archetype of the Irish misery memoir is out there, and on some level I had been primed to believe my father was essentially someone that just slogged off all his responsibilities to me, and it was a good surprise in adulthood to find that wasn't true.