Beautiful and strange

Sometimes one learns about life from memorial tributes. In reading Joseph O'Connor's recounting of the life and kindness of Pultizer Prize winner Frank McCourt in the Irish Sunday Independent of July 26th, the following is revealed. McCourt, a fabulous and generous storyteller, had at one stage of his life followed the Grateful Dead mixing with the "hippies and beatniks" whom he found "beautiful and strange." He thought he had the makings of a novel.