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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal, who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm Michael Silverblad, and today I'm pleased to have as my guest, Frank McCourt, the author

most recently of Tiz, and of course the author of Angela's Ashes.

They are both published by Scribner.

And I wanted, I guess, immediately to ask, what has, you are America's Irishman.

What has this done to your writing?

What effect does becoming a household name have on the man at the desk?

The man isn't at the desk very much these days.

I'm traveling around with Tiz.

I don't have much time to myself.

But even though, I wrote Tiz on the road after Ingers, Ashes was published.

I was on the road constantly and I and wherever I was in

airport lounges or planes, whatever it was, I was writing Tiz. So I haven't started really the next

book that I want to do but I'll be starting. So I'm scribbling in a notebook.

Now, I've been told so many various things about the composition of TIS that it was originally part of Angela's Ashes and submitted it as such.

What is the actuality?

No, Angel's Ashes was a separate entity. I wrote it and ended it.

I was going to go all the way up to the time my mother died in 1981, but when I wrote

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