Despite our best efforts to evoke the Monday sun, we are met with the lingering gloom of the weekend. Said gloom arrives in the form of death: Mr. McCourt, you are charged. Of course you were not a seminal American author, nor an Irish one. Of course your efforts were described as part Hallmark, part Proust. Nonetheless, we swing our sword through the misty thicket and salute you. Frank, we put back a slug of Jamesons for you. Today we honor your writing, legacy, and mind a bit all the delineations that come what may shiver past the bone of life and gnaw into a dead man’s grave with brutal hunger. Got that? Nah, you don’t. That’s called spontaneity. A practice pressed in today’s virtual paper. Anyway, once we were privileged by Mike McCourt — Frank’s bro — in a San Francisco bar. From our conversation now one thing rings in 0ur weepy ears. Tale-wise, Mike was hirsute: “Frank is a great storyteller, and our story has to be told. But he has forgotten things in his attempt to remember.” Ah, me. Shall do we all. Down the hatch, Frank. And to you all we bid brief Mondays and rowdy, roundabout brawls. — Kevin Murphy
