The class filtered into the classroom somewhat quietly, as it was the first day of the semester and nobody entirely knew what to expect. The desks had been arranged in a semi-circle around the teacher, who was standing only slightly less than 'at attention', quietly waiting for the class to fill up. He had a youthful face but with unruly white hair, and it wasn't entirely clear whether he was 40 or 60. Of course, high school students don't have much idea of such things in the first place.

The class finished entering. I think a bell rang? It must have for classes starting, but it has been so long it's hard to call to mind. He went to the door and quietly shut it, and returned to his pose in front of the class. He waited for a few moments for us to settle down, and then let the hush last a few seconds longer than seemed proper.

Then he broke the silence. "Does anyone have... a recipe for eggplant?" His brogue was thick, thicker than I had ever heard from anyone not a character *planned* with a brogue. The class was silent for a few seconds, and then there was some giggling. He spoke again. "Seriously. Does anybody have a recipe for eggplant?" A few people answered quietly, 'no', as if it was a call-and-response they were first to start.

Though I had never cooked eggplant, I found myself struggling to remember any uses for it aside from eggplant parmigiana. But just then he had decided he had made his point, and continued on. He told a story that had happened to him - about running into a frantic woman outside of a shopping market who confronted him to ask him whether he had a recipe for eggplant. He never was entirely clear why the woman corralled him, nor why she hoped to find this information outside the store, but it stuck with him as a bizarre occurrence - a potential story hook for the future.

I think it was September of 1986, and the class was Creative Writing. The place was Stuyvesant High School, and the man was Frank McCourt.

This was years before Angela's Ashes made him an 'overnight' success. He was simply a teacher, though it was well-known in the school he was a very good one, and he was not able to teach everyone who wanted to take his class.

The eggplant story became a lesson, about how if you wanted to be a writer, you *had* to look for the hooks that you encountered in life. That, essentially, story hooks are thrusting themselves upon you all the time, if only you are clever enough to notice. The class was rapt, and remained so for the vast majority of the class.

Many of his classes were rapid-fire jolts on the psyche, sort of experimental use of a defibrillator to shock us out of complacency. He rearranged the desks in the class a great number of times over the semester. He said he was experimenting with the 'best' way to have them laid out, and at the time I believed it reflexively. Now I wonder if it was a tactic to loosen the knots people tie in their heads.

But the class often felt like the laboratory of an utterly charming mad scientist, one you sort of wanted to experiment on you. He would ask for different kind of input from the class frequently. I remember one time he had us bring in music we liked. That was the first time I heard the Sex Pistols, from a girl named Caitlin. I remember he thought it sounded like noise, and indeed so did I, though now it sometimes seems so conventional to me as to be poppy. I'm pretty certain I brought in something by the Police, though I'm not sure what.

He taught us a number of traditional Irish drinking songs, and had the class sing along boisterously. He gave us thought exercises almost as often as writing exercises. The more I think about the things I remember him asking of us I think he must have viewed it as an exercise in consciousness expansion.

I remember him asking us to write a story about something that frightened us. I was embarrassed to talk about it in front of the class, but I went up to him afterwards and told him about my great-grandfather, who I knew to be a widely-respected intellectual, but who had always seemed to me too intimidating to actually get to know. His eyes widened when I told him it was Kenneth Burke, and he sort of softly insisted I should interview him, or get to know him while he was still around. This was advice I did not follow, as I didn't have the guts.

The end project for the class was for us to each write a children's book, which was to be read and reviewed by a class of actual children. I had been steeped in children's literature since before most people were able to read, and neck deep in Lewis Carroll, Watership Down, the Oz and Narnia books, and tried to write something in that style. I thought it only modestly successful, and would probably be embarrassed of it now. But it was a quite substantial book, and presumably was not something he expected. His review, which I still have folded into a copy of the book, was 'What a book! I worry it might be tougher for some younger readers, but well done.' He gave me a 99, but oddly even then I was more concerned about the review of the children, who came to the class and were led by their own teacher in book criticism.

He had offered us the choice to remain anonymous and listen to the reviews without engaging, or of speaking up and asking questions. Being in most social respects a coward, and being just sixteen, I chose silence. I remember being delighted that the children not only liked it, but they *got* it, and argued over the meaning of the ending, which I had intended.

I had some mixed feelings when 'Angela's Ashes' became a massive best-seller. I had for years mentioned him specifically as one of the best teachers I had ever had, and while at college when asked of favorite professors would mention him also. But after the thing you know and love becomes the thing everyone does, it's hard to sound authentic about your experience. This is particularly jarring when you are young and stupid, as I largely was (and one never entirely loses).

I spent years afterwards half-heartedly trying to make it as a punk rocker, and did only a small bit of writing in that time. When I moved back to New York I started work in politics. It must have been in 2001, when I was moving into my place in Hell's Kitchen, when I saw Frank McCourt again, for the only time after I left Stuyvesant.

I remember I had bought something largeish at one of the big stores on Seventh Avenue, and was trying to lug it back to my apartment, which was only a shortish walk away. It could have been a chair, or some pillows, but it was the sort of size one only carries down the street alone if one is still basically a young person, as it was cumbersome, and if I had encountered any issue I would have been in trouble.

I spotted him as he was crossing the street toward me, and almost yelped. I said, "Mr. McCourt!" He stopped and said, "hello". I told him that I had had his class many years ago at Stuyvesant, and I think he said, only slightly sheepishly, "I don't remember you." I told him that I was Kenneth Burke's great-grandson, and he did remember that (unless he was simply being polite, though I remembered the light in his eyes the first time I mentioned it, and it was similar). He asked me if I was still writing, and I sort of shamefully acknowledged, "not really". He asked about what I was doing, and I told him about politics and punk rock, which he found mildly amusing. I didn't have anything I really wanted to ask him, or tell him, that I could phrase in the English language. So I sort of thanked him for inspiring me, and wished him well.

To this day there's not a specific thing I wish I had said to him, some perfect words to address him, to thank him, or to laud him. But I feel like it must exist, at least in the abstract. It has never really worried me, though. I've talked to enough famous people, albeit briefly, to know few messages really resonate when you get so much feedback. At this stage of my life I'm able to be glad that he had success for his own writing, after years of sparking fires in others. And, I guess, proud, to have known someone who influenced so many lives in a positive way.