SOURCE: "How a Rogue Turns Himself Into a Saint," in New York Times Book Review, Vol. 147, July 29, 1998, p. B1.

[In the following interview, McCourt and Witchel discuss the circumstances and consequences of McCourt's childhood, elaborating on passages from A Monk Swimming.]

Malachy McCourt says his railing days are over. "I find a murderous rage in my heart of Limerick, the humiliation of coming out of the slums," he says of his hometown in Ireland, the setting of his brother Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir. Angela's Ashes. "It made you feel like nothing and there was no place to go but down. It was assumed we'd be low-class the rest of our lives. But who can you blame? Governments and churches that are gone now? It's useless. Let those things live rent-free in your head and you'll be a lunatic. Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die."

These are good days for Mr. McCourt, 66, whose own memoir, A Monk Swimming, has spent six weeks on the New York Times best seller list. Not bad for a man who has had careers as an actor, radio personality and bar owner. His book starts in 1952 with his arrival in New York at the age of 20, when he sold Bibles on Fire Island, ran the first singles bar in Manhattan (named after himself), smuggled gold to India, drank, womanized and ranged his way through life as if sheer will and excess alone could make up for every childhood hurt. His writing style is brashly confident, his irreverent brand of storytelling laced with dark humor and sometimes pathos.

But it hasn't taken long for "the ubiquitous they," as Mr. McCourt calls the press and other hangers-on, to snipe at him for trying to cash in on the success of Angela's Ashes and readers' insatiable interest in the McCourt clan. Mr. McCourt couldn't care less.

"They say what I did was ego-driven and name-dropping," he says, "Damn right it is. Who am I going to write about? People I didn't meet?"

It seems impossible to imagine anyone left in that category. At Eamonn Doran on Second Avenue at 53d Street in Manhattan, where he is a regular, he greets everyone by name, settling into a booth beneath his picture with President Clinton. "I was toastmaster when he was named Irishman of the Year at the Waldorf," he says proudly. The photograph's inscription reads, "Blessings on all at Eamonn's from my pal Bill and myself, Malachy."

The chef comes from the kitchen to deliver Mr. McCourt's pot of tea personally as he signals the waitress for menus. "Would you bring me some water, love?" he asks in a tone just familiar enough to make her blush.

Yes, he's still a charmer after all these years, a fact of which he's well aware. His blue eyes are clear and smart, thatched with shaggy white brows from the Brothers Grimm. His wrists are as thick as his hands, a reminder of his days as a longshoreman. His picture on the back cover of his book shows a handsome young man, or in the parlance of America, a "cute" one. A term to which he says he at first took offense. "Cute in Ireland meant cunning and devious," he said, then smiled. "And I'm not sure that I'm not."

But past his well-honed blarney shtick, which he shines on and off again at whim, the gratifying thing about Mr. McCourt is that he can drop his professional character act and segue into a smart, emotionally direct conversation faster than you can say "Top o' the morning."

Milk of Kindness, Slums of Death

His double layers of personality seem to echo what he says about Ireland itself. Talking of the period covered in the book, he says. "That was a tumultuous time for me. I was stepping into a new life, casting off the rigidity of the church and its smothering society. The corruption and degradation covered with Irish oak. This image of a pink-cheeked mother offering cups of milk and peace and happiness wherever you go, with the road rising to meet you, and there in the slums they were dying of disease, despair, depression."

The waitress brings the water, and Mr. McCourt orders filet of sole, since he's become a vegetarian. He quit smoking 10 years ago, drinking 13 years ago. "Just sainthood now," he says dryly.

Which is the polar opposite of himself as a young adult. "All of a sudden here am I, a stripling, so freeing," he says of coming to New York, where people "trusted what I appeared to be, didn't know what a messed-up fellow I was in my head. I left school at age 13. I was illiterate with no role models. The great psychobabble today is the dysfunctional family. Well, I've never met one that was functional. In Limerick, a family that was dysfunctional was one who could afford to drink but didn't."

"I had the taste of the alcohol since I was 11," he goes on, sipping tea. "It allowed me to be clever, charming and to behave outrageously. Acting also allowed me not to be me. So I could indulge every fantasy in this paradise of America."

Every paradise has its price, and so did Mr. McCourt's. He married Linda Wachsman and they had two children. Siobhan and Malachy, which did not stop Mr. McCourt's drinking and carousing. Divorce was inevitable. He met Diana Galin in 1963, and they have been married 33 years. They have two sons, Conor and Cormac, and Mr. McCourt is stepfather to her daughter, Nina. Through the years he acted in daytime television dramas, including "Ryan's Hope" and "Search for Tomorrow," had successful shows on talk radio and tried his hand at opening more bars. "I'm a rotten businessman," he admits. "I've closed more saloons than any alcoholic." He has worked often in the theater, sometimes with his brother Frank, performing the musical revue they wrote together, A Couple of Blaguards, about their childhood.

But as he says: "At a certain age the lights begin to go out as an actor. I was not getting work, I was broke, having never held a steady job, really. When I told Frank I was thinking about writing a book, he said great." His smile is rueful. "But the money's all gone," he says of his advance. "I gave it to my kids. You can't keep it unless you give it away."

His daughter Siobhan lives in Boston with her two children. Malachy teaches diving in Bali. Nina, who is retarded, lives in a group home in New York. Conor is a filmmaker whose documentary The McCourts of Limerick was on Cinemax. He is also a police sergeant in Manhattan, where Cormac teaches integral yoga.

Their mother is studying for a master's degree in community economic development. "And she puts up with me," Mr. McCourt says gratefully.

Mr. McCourt's other favorite person is his brother Frank. "He's an amazing man," he says. "When he was 12, one of our schoolmasters said: 'My boy, you are a literary genius. My strong suggestion is to go to America. They will appreciate you there.' Over the years I've read what he's written that never got published, and I always said it still holds. He is a literary genius. Also the most nonjudgmental decent guy. He forgives."

Has he read A Monk Swimming, whose title comes from Mr. McCourt's mishearing the Hail Mary's "Blessed art thou amongst women" as "Blessed art thou, a monk swimming"? "He's writing now, so he hasn't read it," he says. "He told me: 'I can't be hearing your voice. For years it's been very loud.'"

And he laughs, though he admits he is still not free of the long-reaching shadows of Limerick. He and Frank were born in Brooklyn, but the family returned to Ireland when Malachy was 3, after the death of his 7-week-old sister, Margaret. His father drank and could not hold a job; the McCourts lived in desperate poverty both in New York and Ireland. His twin brothers also died of illness. Eventually his father left them.

"When desertion is involved, the absent parent seems romantic and caring." Mr. McCourt says. His mother, Angela, "was in a depression," he says. "My father had taken to the alcohol, and she was helpless in the face of it. My mother wanted to go back to Ireland after Margaret died. And then she was thrown out of one slum and only found shelter in another with a drunken beast of a thing who would sit tearing at a steak with his bare hands and throw meat to the dog while we children sat hungry. Then he beats us and sleeps with my mother so we could hear it. The horrors of that, the shame. There was a sadness of that for years and years. I once wrote to her and said I loved her. She laughed at it. She couldn't accept that.

"Coming out of that life, the things that get you are the two evils of shame on one shoulder, the demon fear on the other. Shame says you came from nothing, you're nobody, they'll find you out for what you and your mother have done. Fear says what's the use of bothering, drink as much as you can, dull the pain. As a result shame takes care of the past, fear takes care of the future and there's no living in the present." He sighs. "The thing about the low self-esteem rubbish is thinking you have no gifts. Eventually I became my father, who I hated the most."

There has been some healing, though. The success of both his book and his brother's had helped, of course. And while Conor McCourt was researching his documentary, he located the grave in Queens where Margaret was buried.

"We all went out, Frank, Alphie, Mike and myself," Mr. McCourt says, referring to his surviving brothers. "It was a pauper's grave. My wife, Diana, had decided to keep some of Angela's ashes in our house, even after we had scattered them. But when Conor found the grave, we brought the ashes and reunited the mother and the daughter after 64 years." His eyes fill. "It still makes me weep to think about it. The recognition that there was something of that child. We honored her and we honored my mother."

He starts on his third pot of tea, and soon enough the talk returns to Ireland. "I picked up an old man on the road once," Mr. McCourt says, "during the hardest driving rain. When he got out he said: 'Thank you sir for your kindness. May you have a happy death.'"

He smiles. "When you think about it, a happy death means you had a happy life. And I think I have. These days, the simple things are appealing. Diana, our closeness and love. The grandchildren. I'm having my dream, one day at a time. I've learned acceptance and letting go and to just keep a sense of humor about this absurd condition."

Which is?

"That we're a species with a hundred percent mortality rate and not one of us accepts it. So, it's true. Live every day as if it's going to be your last, and one day, you'll be right."